The Facts:
Synopsis: A workaholic man enlists a magical genie’s help to win his family back before Christmas.
Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Paapa Essiedu, Denée Benton, Marc Maron, Jordyn McIntosh, Luis Guzmán, Alan Cumming
Director: Sam Boyd
Rated: PG
Running Length: 93 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: Regarding Christmas gifts, the adage is true: it is better to give than receive. As a child, I wasn’t so sure, but now, as an adult with my own bank account (and mortgage), I see the value in picking out the perfect present for the right person and watching their face as they unwrap it. Movies can be similar treats to find underneath your TV tree, and it’s always a pleasure to find a sterling silver classic packaged with an elegant bow. In the case of the new Peacock movie Genie, however, the experience is more like being on the receiving end of a Tiffany box containing a pair of used athletic socks instead of anything sparkly.
In what may be the most unambitious movie in 2023, we have a dependable star (Melissa McCarthy) working with a celebrated screenwriter well-versed in clever comedy with heart (Richard Curtis) in a Christmas fantasy set in New York City. How did it wind up being so trivial and throwaway? You know a film is in trouble when it casts Alan Cumming as the lone bad guy and the actor is too bored to chew any of the scenery.
It’s coming on Christmas, and instead of singing songs of joy and peace, Bernard (Paapa Essiedu, Men) has lost his job at an art dealership run by a smug swine (Cumming, GoldenEye) and missed his daughter Eve’s birthday on top of it. Showing up without a present is the last straw for his wife, Julie (Denée Benton, Our Friend), and she leaves with Eve to spend the holiday with her mother. Alone with his gift, an antique box he pulled from his shelf, he gives it a rub and surprise, out pops genie Flora (Melissa McCarthy, Thunder Force), who has been a prisoner to the box since running afoul of a sorcerer in the Middle Ages.
After some initial convincing of her extraordinary powers, Flora lets Bernard know that unlike the stories he’s heard growing up and in Disney movies, he gets as many wishes as he wants. While there are caveats and certain things she can’t do, the world is his new oyster, and Bernard sets out to win his family back and turn the Christmas holiday around for the better. However, wishes can only get Bernard so far, and the real magic must come from within if he’s going to mend a bond that’s been broken.
Even knowing that Curtis (Notting Hill, Love Actually, Bridget Jones’ Diary) was responsible for the screenplay (and co-credited with the original story), I had a hard time believing he could have scribbled out such bland dialogue. Only brief patches come alive with the emotional weight and wry wit Curtis built his entire career on, but far too much feels like it was made up on the spot, with little regard for the bigger picture being told. You can easily pick out which lines were pure Curtis and which may have been tinkered with by McCarthy (a little goes a long way with her riffs) or director Sam Boyd while in production.
Another problem is due to the movie being set in NYC instead of London where it seems to want to be placed naturally, a geographic quirk that makes a big difference in the kind of zippy comedy Curtis and company are going for in Genie. Even more bizarre, Essiedu’s a British citizen with an accent to go with it, but not all his family members that have arrived in town to celebrate have accents – but it doesn’t matter because once they get involved with McCarthy’s genie, they quite literally vanish for the rest of the film. (Maybe so we overlook the accents?) This is just one of a number of loose ends that get shoved in the unresolved plot points folder and forgotten about — at 93 minutes, there has to be a longer cut of Genie out there somewhere (not that I care to see it).
One roadblock Genie never gets around is that Benton’s Julie is such an enormously dull dud that you wonder why Essiedu is even trying to win her back in the first place. Flora and Bernard completely make over the apartment he shares with his family, yet his wife doesn’t even notice all the walls have changed colors, the décor has changed, and the furniture has moved until her second visit. The entire separation between Julie and Bernard is a cliché movie wrinkle conveniently added to create tension, yet the emotional weight of it never pans out for anyone involved. In fact, it’s never even established how solid their marriage is; it’s suggested that Julie may be pondering starting to date another man after the first few days of staying with her mother…so something is definitely amiss.
Countless films have been made about genies and their powers, most with the stipulation that the person holding the magic lamp (or tackily bejeweled ‘antique’ as we have here) gets three wishes. Opening up the wishes to unlimited may have unlocked the possibilities for Curtis, but it gives Genie nowhere to stop. That becomes a big problem with an absurd third-act subplot involving the Mona Lisa that should be able to be resolved in three seconds but winds up taking nearly twenty minutes. McCarthy tries to sweeten up some of the staleness with her schtick to no avail, yet does come through at the end when Curtis pulls out scenes worth some dramatic heft. Still, it’s telling that Genie is so small scale that Curtis is credited with a teleplay, not a screenplay. You can see how low the target was from the beginning. Genie did not rub me the right way.