In 1991, Richard Curtis wrote a TV holiday special, fondly remembered in the U.K., called Bernard and the Genie. It starred Alan Cumming as an art dealer who loses his job and his girlfriend shortly before Christmas only to then accidentally free a centuries-old genie, played by Lenny Henry, whom he introduces to modern London and the Christmas holidays whilst having several wishes granted as they become friends. It’s a cute idea if not particularly substantive. Yet for some reason, twenty-two years later Curtis felt the desire to remake it as an American romantic-comedy feature film for ailing streaming service Peacock of all things.
I guess I sort of understand it -it’s a very safe movie project for a writer whose association to Four Weddings and Love, Actually still carries a lot of clout, and who is firmly in the nostalgia phase of his career -his last movie was the Danny Boyle-directed Yesterday, an earnest if considerably-awkward Beatles celebration. It was probably a low-effort update that he approached with the same level of sentiment-over-creativty as his Comic Relief sequel sketches to the two aforementioned movies. Those sketches are fuelled by niceness and nostalgia that to some degree succeed at overpowering their inherent shallowness. But there’s not the same kind of nostalgia to Bernard and the Genie -virtually unknown outside the U.K.- leaving only that shallowness, barely rippled by an occasionally good joke.
Curtis has a bit of a habit for pairing his male British leads with lone American love interests in the U.K., but for this movie he has tweaked that dynamic by centring a British man living with his American family in New York. Played by Paapa Essiedu, Bernard is that most tired of cliché rom-com figures: the workaholic. A husband and father who misses his daughter’s big concert, straining his relationship with his wife and indirectly leading to him being fired, it is one of the most banal set-ups you could imagine -until he rubs an antique lamp and a Genie comes out, here played by Melissa McCarthy. The plot then follows fairly closely to the original special except for an additional goal of Bernard winning back his wife and daughter -which his wishes are seen to grant him the capacity to do so with fairly little personal effort.
Essiedu is a very good actor -he was last seen as Jessie Buckley’s emotionally abusive ex in Men- but he is almost completely arbitrary in this role. There is nothing at all distinct or interesting to his performance as another of Curtis’s hapless but likeable English protagonists. He can deliver a witty observation well enough or a beat of shallow sincerity, but there’s already so much nothing to the part and Essiedu isn’t given the capacity to broaden him at all. Bernard is written as a blank canvas which hurts the performance more, in part due to Curtis’s propensity towards colour-blind casting. Just as with Himesh Patel in Yesterday, the choice was made for a person-of-colour lead, but without any thought given towards recalibrating the script and dialogue around this racial and cultural identity. As such, Bernard, and even his black family members feel just like boring white characters.
The actual boring white character paired with him is the Genie called Flora (her whiteness covered by her being a Pictish genie –itself a reasonably funny joke). McCarthy certainly has more of a presence, and more charisma than Essiedu; though it is rather exhaustingly that same brand of goofy shtick she just can’t seem to shake no matter how many Can You Ever Forgive Me’s she does. So she’s this brash, bubbly, naïve genie, yet who in spite of her fish-out-of-water situation feels more at home in this colourful flamboyant New York world than Bernard. When looking for a style of outfit to manifest for herself out on the street, Bernard vetoes a couple that honestly wouldn’t be that conspicuous. She does find herself a sense of style, but all through the movie there is no substance to accompany this. She has maybe two or three funny lines, she dispenses a few obvious platitudes to Bernard to reinvigorate his relationship with his wife and daughter, and there’s an obligatory bit where she dances to “I Wish” by Skee-Lo –speaking of this movie’s inherent whiteness.
The film is directed by Sam Boyd, and like almost any director who has worked with a Curtis script, his voice is drowned out by that of the writer. Yet Mike Newell, Roger Michell, and Danny Boyle at least brought certain skillsets to the table, were able to bring something out of the actors or in the filmmaking, or how precisely the script would be used; but there is nothing of interest that Boyd offers here, beyond simply making the movie look like a Hallmark Christmas special. In his defence though, Curtis’s script suggests minimally better. As someone who has watched most of his movies and shows, and generally admires him and his work a great deal, I can say fairly confidently this is some of his worst and even laziest material. It’s saccharine, but without the humour and charming earnestness found in his other scripts. It also just doesn’t seem all that creative pertaining to the conceit about wishes. Anything goes, but nothing is exploited. Instead, there is very little that doesn’t feel in some way tempered or derivative.
The one genuinely fun beat of the film is of course a direct carry-over from the original special (which is fairly different in some notable, more entertaining ways). It’s where Bernard wishes for the Mona Lisa in his apartment and it appears, replacing the one in the Louvre with a jersey and causing an international incident. The subsequent discovery of the painting in Bernard’s place and police encounters for both Bernard and Flora are clever and modestly enjoyable -though it is a short stretch of the film, followed up by a laboured attempt at an emotional beat in their parting.
Alan Cumming from the original special appears in the role of Bernard’s horrible boss -taking over from an immensely entertaining Rowan Atkinson in a goatee. He and an inexplicable Marc Maron as Bernard’s bellhop friend are incredibly overqualified for their shallow parts -although Cumming does make for some good camp evil out of it. Things like this though are only momentarily welcome distractions from an overall dull and uninventive holiday movie carried on the back of Curtis’s reputation from Love, Actually -a much better movie to watch instead. It should lastly be noted that Genie is a Peacock original, a streaming service that honestly suits this level of effort and its inevitable place as a mere footnote of a more illustrious body of work.
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