When I was 12-years-old and home sick from school, I was watching an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. I had an epiphany. I took a sip of my orange juice, threw the afghan off my body and exclaimed (to no one in particular) – “Why is Larry Hagman not wishing for Barbara Eden to be his wife and love him madly?!”
I might not have used those exact words.
But, now, so many years later, my wife at least once a week finds a way to talk about Idris Elba. I’m guessing she was thinking Tilda Swinton should wish for the same thing when he comes popping out of the bottle in this movie. Sure, he had some jacked up ears, and was about 40 feet tall at first, but…he did clean up nicely, sporting that terry cloth hotel bathrobe.
George Miller, the director behind the Mad Max movies (and the disappointing Lorenzo’s Oil and Witches of Eastwick), really gives us some incredible visuals and imagery. There might have been a few hiccups in the CGI, but it was usually stunning to watch. Sometimes it was like a Salvador Dali painting come to life. The problem lies with the fact that Miller has Tilda Swinton (in my opinion, one of the top three actresses working today), and Idris Elba (who is easy on the eyes, whether you’re a man or a woman) – who have absolutely no chemistry together!! These are two lost souls that we need to feel click better together. Oh, and this genie is one that really likes to get his freak on! [Side note: he’s called a “djinn” in the movie, but for purposes of understanding this review, I’ll stick with the more common “genie”]
This is all based on the story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt. I wish I had some gin while watching this Djinn tell his crazy stories; none of which were all that interesting or enchanting.
We watch as Alithea Binnie (Swinton), a solitary academic, takes a work trip to Istanbul (which I hear is lovely this time of year). At a shop she gets an old bottle, the genie pops out and offers her three wishes. She asks for a billion dollars, a house in the Hampton’s, and unlimited wishes. Okay, I’m joshing. She actually isn’t so keen on the idea of making wishes, but the genie needs her to, so he can be free from the curse that’s kept him locked in the glass bottle for the last few months. Oh wait…the last 3,000 years.
Most of this two-hander is spent in a hotel room (no, not the way you think). We get a lot of flashbacks, and again, the visuals in a lot of these are astounding.
We see stories of the genie hooking up with a young genius, the Queen of Sheba, Queen Latifah, and a young genius (that makes a wish that reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). He also gets to hang out in a fetish-laden imperial court, which had some sex scenes that made me laugh as hard as the one in Midsommar (if you saw that, you know what I’m referring to).
What’s also strange is that this deals a lot with the art of storytelling, yet the way this story is told just isn’t very good. It feels rushed and a bit chaotic.
Along with the visuals, I liked a lot of the edits. The film opens with a plane landing, filmed from underneath. As we see the tires touch the runway, a quick edit goes to the wheels of a luggage cart being pulled through that airport. I love little touches like that. One of the small things that bugged me – watching Alithea writing, and she typed with just one finger on a laptop (as a kid, it bugged me watching Dick Van Patten as a columnist typing that way on Eight is Enough; can’t somebody pull these people aside and say “Just type fast, the normal way. Nobody is going to read what you’re writing, but you write with regularity, and should look like you know how to type.”
The score was intriguing, and credit goes to Tom Hokenborg for the variety of instruments used to help create the vibe.
Unfortunately, this passion project for George Miller – who channels both Guillermo del Toro and Wes Anderson – just doesn’t pull off this ambitious picture.
2 stars out of 5.