Horrible Non-Horror: Kazaam!

"I was a medium-level juvenile delinquent from Newark who always dreamed about doing a movie. Someone said, 'Hey, here's $7 million, come in and do this genie movie.' What am I going to say, no? So I did it."—Shaquille O’Neal

With logic like that, it’s almost hard to be too tough on Kazaam, one of the more infamous critical bombs of the 1990s. Then again, the fact that O’Neal made $7 million off it AND rapped extensively throughout the process eliminates any guilt I might have.

Quick Plot: When a wrecking ball knocks into the window of an abandoned antique lamp shop, the disembodied voice of an NBA all-star is released into a boom box soon to be discovered by Max, an unhappy sixth grader struggling to cope with his mom’s impending marriage to a perfectly nice fireman, the mystery of having never met his deadbeat dad, and daily beatings from Latino bullies. Poor white kids in the ‘90s!

It looks like SOME screenwriter watched a whole lot of live action 1990s Disney kids’ films, eh?

Upon finding the mystical boom box (and yes, this being 1996, one could and should take a chug of Zima every time the words “boom box” are used), Max frees the titular genie Kazaam, who introduces himself via rap.

Well, I think it’s rap. Shaq basically talks in rhyme and music plays underneath him. That’s the same thing, right?

Although Max is guaranteed three wishes, Kazaam’s skills are a little rusty, rendering the kid dubious of his newfound rapper’s delight’s actual powers. What follows is a not-creepy-at-all sequence wherein Kazaam starts following the kid’s every move, be it to find his smarmy music pirating dad or, um, to bed.

But back to the music pirating, since that’s the ultimate plotline Kazaam’s script chooses to follow. Makes sense really: if there’s one thing 6-12 year old audiences want in their mainstream family comedy films, it’s a morality lesson about the illegal side of the recording industry. Will Max’s absentee father learn that videotaping live performances to sell on the black market for an evil mustache twirling, genie hijacking Arab is wrong? Ain’t NO villain worse than a sham recording studio executive!

Sigh. Even The Nucracker In 3D knew that when in doubt, toss in a Nazi.

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser (the man responsible for two of my vastly different guilty pleasures, The Running Man and The Cutting Edge), Kazaam stands today as hilariously ill-planned attempt to create a Rock-like movie star using a cookie cutter kids’ film. It pains me to say this, but Shaquille O’Neal isn’t actually the worst thing about Kazaam. Like a lot of athletes-turned-thespians, the man can’t quite act, but is surprisingly likable when just hanging around.

Just ask Max’s mom, who temporarily forgets her engagement to a hot NYC firefighter to flirt with the 7’ tall self-proclaimed tutor to her tweve-year-old son.

This being Kazaam, however, Shaq doesn’t JUST hang around. He raps. He does the cabbage patch. He delivers lines like “This puts the boom in box!” in a manner that, despite his self-describing introductory song, is neither contagious, outrageous, nor spontaneous.

Although I’m not saying it isn’t funny.

No, the problem with Kazaam—aside from its very existence—is that it’s so clearly written as a product by people who can’t quite really write to begin with. Nevertheless, screenwriters Christian Ford and Roger Soffer grabbed a batch of proven tropes—fatherless kid, teen bullies, magical (literally) Negro, stock Arab villains (aaahhhh the ‘90s), product placement—and mushed them into something of a movie. With an incredibly unlikable brat of a protagonist and a muddled plot (remember: the bad guys in this KIDS’ FILM are music bootleggers) Kazaam is rather wonderfully miscalculated.

Also, a tad, perhaps one might say, racist? Or just weirdly unaware of some of its implications. See, when a black man tells a bratty young white boy that the kid is now his master, something slightly wrong is going on. “I own you!” Max later shouts when Kazaam dares to ignore his whims. Yes, this post is coming from someone who epically ranted against The Blind Side to the occasional ‘you’re overreacting’ comment, but PLEASE don’t tell me I’m not supposed to be reading anything into A WHITE BOY OWNING A BLACK MAN.

Perhaps one could think of Kazaam as a ‘90s version of The Toy. Except with rapping. And with the grand comedy skills of Richard Pryor replaced by the wooden enthusiasm of a basketball player. And with Middle Eastern music pirates standing in for Jackie Gleason, piranhas, and the KKK.

Did I mention the rapping?

High Notes

Shaq gets a “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” moment, and you KNOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW how much I love those

Low Notes

It’s not my place to criticize a film I’m only watching BECAUSE of its awful reputation, but even the bad movie lover in me can’t find a proper rationalization for why concert bootleggers made sense as Disney villains

Lessons Learned

Building a neutron bomb can be a little dangerous

Romeo once said to Juliet, “grab four of your friends and we’ll have a sextet.” Weird how I don’t remember that scene from 9^th grade English class

Nubian goat eyes is the food of kings

Men are like buses. There’s always another (sound advice for a mom to pass onto her child)

In life, there are no second chances. No. Second. Chances. Well, there are if your genie becomes a djinn, but what are the odds?

The Winning Line

“And if you girls are hungry, let’s green egg and ham it”

Rapped, of course. I chose this particular lyric because from henceforth, I shall no longer use the term “Let’s get something to eat.” No no no (or as Matthew McConaughey would say in Magic Mike, “Nahhh nahhh nahhh”). My goal in life is to now see how long I can go constantly saying “Let’s green eggs and ham it” before being beaten senselessly—actually, sensibly—by friends, family, waiters, take-out cashiers, or anyone with hearing on the street

The Winning Possibly Really Inappropriate Sodomy Based Line

In a film rife with slightly discomforting scenes between a preteen and his full-grown friend with no sense of boundaries, it’s kind of a twist that The Winning Possibly Really Inappropriate Sodomy Based Line does NOT come from the mouth of a genie. Instead, there’s this:

“There’s only one place this will fit!” threaten the bullies as they wave a small key in front of Max’s terrified eyes. Um…ew?

Basketball!

Just in case you were worried that Shaquille O’Neal forgot his athletic roots, fear not:

Law & Order: SVU Alert

You KNEW I couldn’t let this one go: Max’s mother is played by Ally Walker, best known to current television audiences as the villainous Agent Stahl on Sons of Anarchy but ALSO special for guest starring in a pretty ridiculous episode of my favorite criminal justice program. In Season 11’s “Conned,” Walker played a psychiatrist who was controversially into electro-shock treatment and positively scandalously into sleeping with her thirteen-year-old patient, who was also the father of her baby. Just another day in SVU

Rent/Bury/Buy

Kazaam is pretty much as bad as you probably think it is, so those (like me) who look forward to such validation will certainly benefit from a rental. The disc is tragically sans special features, but it does have this as its menu:

Which is almost worth owning in itself.

Because Not All Abductions Are As Fun as XTRO...

Dear extraterrestrial visitors,

If you ever decide to stop by this little blue planet, consider planning your vacation in advance. Yes, there are indeed some beautiful trees to be found in Arizona (who knew?) and some friendly mid-1990s character actors willing to embrace folksy accents, but there’s also exciting places like Dollywood, Times Square, Niagra Falls, Machu Picchu, and a lot of other attractions that may be more rewarding than drilling holes into young men’s flesh.

But hey, we all have our travel hobbies (mine include wax museums, so what do I know?) and so perhaps I’m trying to make the alien cruisers in 1993’s Fire In the Sky something they are not. Have fun. Wear sunscreen. And take lots of pictures.

Quick Plot:

A manly group of lumberjacks enter a folksy Arizona bar in near shell shock. Led by a strangely scruffy Robert Patrick as Mike, the men tentatively agree to stick to their story and call in the police (quickly aided by famed Montana detective James Garner) to explain some very mysterious happenings.

We learn in flashback that the gang was finishing up a day’s work tearing down a forest when, upon driving home after sunset, an incredible red light filled the horizon. Big dreamer Travis (D.B. Sweeney, forever he of ‘toepick’ Cutting Edge fame and one of my favorite drunken celebrity encounters in the subway ever) insisted on investigating, wandering under a gigantic space ship before being stuck by its beam. 

With the rest of the fellas squealing like thirteen year old girls learning that Robert Pattinson is really a slug in a man’s suit, Mike speeds away and leaves his best friend/fiance of his kid sister to his mysterious fate.

Upon returning to the clearing, Mike can find no sign of Travis. A search party is mounted, failing to come up with any evidence of the young man’s whereabouts. In the small town, people talk. Well, not quite. They just constantly stop what they’re doing any time the suspicious loggers enter a public place so as to ogle and whisper inaudibly in judgement.

Fire in the Sky is an interesting, if strangely organized thriller that doesn’t quite know where the best part of its story is located. As Mike, Robert Patrick is sympathetic and believable, but we as the audience just aren’t that interested in the financial and marital problems brought on by his insistence to tell the truth. Similarly, Craig Sheffer’s moody Dallis never makes much sense in the big picture: Garner and the rest of the police force want to make the ex-con a prime suspect, but we as the audience already know he (and all the men) are innocent. Why waste time developing a subplot that simply won’t go anywhere?

The answer, of course, stems from those five little words that tend to mildly doom any promising premise: Based. On. A. True. Story. 

Travis Walton did and does exist, and Fire In the Sky is supposedly a fairly accurate story to his tellings of what happened that day in 1975. The grabby tagline is fine for unsettling a certain audience, but the film unfortunately falls into a bland formula that insists on documenting the police investigation and relationship drama that came from the event. 

Of course, most people that celebrate this movie focus on the third act, where (mild spoiler, but not really) the newly recovered Travis remembers just what happened to him  in those five mysterious days. For this reason alone, Fire In the Sky remains a powerful, creepy little film that finds new ways to portray a not-so-friendly (though never quite defined) race of extraterrestrials. It doesn’t completely redeem what comes before (and after) it, but this sequence is truly terrifying and, whether ‘true’ or not, sends satisfying chills down any viewer’s spine.

High Points

Right from the opening, we totally believe Robert Patrick to be everything the town sheriff says: a good straight man with a clear record to his name. Though I kind of hated where his character ended up (more due to scripting than performance), I’d say Patrick  grounds the film with believable sympathy

You won’t find a review of this film that doesn’t compliment the actual spaceship sequence because darnit, it’s truly chilling

Low Points

Of all the ways to end the film, was a quicky epilogue that jarringly swerves away from such a powerful and haunting sequence really the right way to go?

Lessons Learned

Being abducted and probed by gooey Baby Oopsie-Daisy-like aliens will not harm one’s fertility

One can grow a mean collection of facial hair in 2 1/2 years

Unfriendly ETs have diverse film tastes, with interior design styles inspired by both Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and A Clockwork Orange

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was a little let down by Fire In the Sky, but that stems more from the fact that it’s so well-made and acted and yet weirdly misguided in its plot structure. Ultimately, the film didn’t win me over yet at the same time, I recommend a rental, particularly if you enjoy alien-centric thrillers. X-Files fans should easily dig this, and even straighter horror viewers will find some neat stuff.

Also, for whatever reason of contagious movie thinkery, Fire In the Sky is a hot pick for the week here in the blogosphere. For more talk about D.B. Sweeney's shivering and true story tinkering, head to From Midnight, With Love, where TheMike himself (but not as played by Robert Patrick) does some reviewing, and The Horror Digest, where Andre digs into the real stories of FItS and other such films so proudly wearing their genuine status.