#‘Genie’ Review: Melissa McCarthy in Peacock’s Ho-Hum Holiday Film

You have to really watch your language when hanging out with a genie. Especially a genie who can grant unlimited wishes. After all, it’s too easy to utter the words “I wish” when you don’t really mean them, and the result could be that you accidentally send someone directly to Hell. So please, please, be careful what you say.

If that warning seems a bit fanciful, then you haven’t seen the new holiday-themed Christmas movie premiering on Peacock. Genie features so many jokes revolving around characters carelessly uttering “I wish” only to have to quickly reverse themselves that the film seems more like a public service announcement than a would-be holiday classic.

Written by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill), the streaming film is a loose remake of Bernard and the Genie, a 1991 BBC television movie that he also scripted. You can’t blame the British writer-director for attempting to go back to the Yuletide well; after all, his Love Actually has become such a cinematic holiday staple that for many people it now ranks alongside It’s a Wonderful Life and Die Hard as required Christmastime viewing. This latest effort, however, is unlikely to join that pantheon.

Melissa McCarthy plays the title role, following the Robin Williams tradition of genies seeming more like moonlighting Borscht Belt comedians than magical figures of Arabian folklore. Her character, named Flora (really?), doesn’t seem all that excited about her lot in life. Finally released from the antique jewelry box in which she’s been trapped for 2,000 years by an angry sorcerer, she wearily utters, “Let’s get with it…your wish is my command.”

The person she’s addressing is the Dickensian-named Bernard Bottle (Paapa Essiedu, I May Destroy You), who naturally needs his life straightened out. Bernard has been toiling so hard for his tyrannical art auction-house boss (Alan Cumming, who, fun fact, played the role of Bernard in the original film) that he’s neglected his wife (Denee Benton, The Gilded Age) and adorable young daughter (Jordyn Mcintosh). When Bernard misses his daughter’s ice-skating birthday celebration, his fed-up spouse announces that she and their daughter will be spending the holidays without him at her parents’ home.

The distraught Bernard absent-mindedly rubs the jewelry box that he pathetically attempted to give his daughter as a birthday present, only to have Flora suddenly appear. She informs him that she can grant him unlimited wishes, unlike the traditional three (“That’s fairy tale stuff,” she sniffs), and that there are several rules, such as no time traveling allowed.

Cue the culture clash gags as Bernard introduces the colorfully costumed Flora to the joys of pizza, hip-hop and movies, especially ones starring Tom Cruise. She has a little trouble adjusting at first — she doesn’t quite seem to understand the concept of air quotes — but is soon happily bopping around the city with him in what seems like an old “I Love New York” television commercial. If the two stop for coffee, you can be sure you’ll be able to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in the background.  

There’s not much suspense about whether Flora’s presence will help Bernard figure out his true values and repair his fractured marriage. But first, wacky complications must ensue, including Bernard getting arrested for stealing the Mona Lisa (yes, another ill-advised wish) and Flora striking up a flirtation with the wisecracking doorman in Bernard’s building. (He’s played by Marc Maron, who’s long proven by now that he deserves better than these sorts of comedic stock company supporting roles.) And yes, of course, there’s a magic carpet ride around Manhattan, although the special effects are so cheesy it looks as if it were created in a computer science class circa 1993.

To be fair, the film directed by Sam Boyd has its amusing moments, thanks to Curtis’ well-honed comic instincts. Essiedu nicely underplays as Bernard, going more for emotion than cheap laughs, and McCarthy is such a warm, engaging presence that you’ll search your home for any old-looking bottle that might contain a similarly helpful genie. But if you find one, let’s hope you’re a little wiser with your wishes. Bernard uses his final ones to secure a table at a packed restaurant and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for his daughter when the waiter snootily informs her that none are available. Presumably, it never occurred to him that curing cancer, eradicating world hunger or ending global conflicts might be better choices during the holiday season.