Genie is now streaming on Peacock.
There was a time when my former editor and I used to openly wonder if Melissa McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone, was trying to sabotage her career in an almost MK-Ultra-like psychological experiment of self-sabotage. Her latest comedy, Genie, only strengthens that sentiment.
However, to my utter shock, McCarthy’s Genie is “Falcone-less.” Now, we’re left to wonder where it all went wrong for the stars of Bridesmaids, Identity Thief, The Heat, and Spy. McCarthy had a sterling four-movie run that most comedians can only dream of.
Then Tammy, The Boss, Life of the Party, Superintelligence, and Thunder Force met the stamp of approval. If it wasn’t for Jim Henson’s choosing to direct The Happytime Murders, that would have made six straight comedic commercials and critical duds for the pair. McCarthy is beginning to feel the effects of a career on a downward spiral that is out of her control.
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Genie’s Plot Summary and Review
So, how do we explain Genie? We can’t, unfortunately, because the film is from Love Life’s Sam Boyd and Love Actually, Notting Hill, Four Weddings, and Funeral scribe Richard Curtis. These two filmmakers should be solid gold when it comes to holiday entertainment.
Curtis’s script follows Bernard (Paapa Essiedu), who works too much and spends too little time with his family. He has an overbearing antiques dealer boss (Alan Cumming) who makes him work past his daughter Eve’s (Jordyn McIntosh’s) seventh birthday. Suffice it to say Bernard’s wife, Julie (Denée Benton), is unhappy.
Especially when she realizes her husband forgot a gift. That’s when Bernard grabs the nearest jewelry box, but Julie and Eve are not fooled. She takes her daughter to her mother’s. While alone, Bernard rubs the antique three times, and a holiday genie (McCarthy) pops out. Her name is Flora, and she’s ready to cause plenty of mischief.
Peacock’s Genie is the same old cookie-cutter holiday movie.
The problem with Genie is that the film is soulless and in the vein of the same old, cookie-cutter holiday movie you’ve seen thousands of times before but not done nearly as well. The film’s family scenes are as artificial as any Christmas confection with zero nuance, depth, or enough effort to, at the very least, be manipulative to pull at your heartstrings.
For example, in a laughable scene, Denée Benton’s Julie has a perplexing conversation with her mother. Julie might as well be talking for a while, only saying once, “That’s right,” in a one-way conversation. Julie concludes that her husband working so much is “not living in the real world,” falling into the standard family trope of how jobs are unnecessary when raising a family.
The same goes for McCarthy, whose animated Flora is the single reason to see this movie. However, Essiedu has very little buddy chemistry with McCarthy. The odd-couple pairing is frictionless. That forces the two-time Academy Award nominee to be a one-woman show and do too much to carry the picture.
Is Peacock’s Genie Worth Watching?
Peacock’s Genie is not worth watching because of the supporting cast’s lack of entertainment and character development. Alan Cumming’s boundary-questionable boss is a cartoonish afterthought. There are very few laughs outside McCarthy’s frenetic and constant improvisation.
While I complained about McCarthy’s track record, she is consistently the best part of any movie. She is adorable in the role and has a delightful running gag about being in love with Tom Cruise, but if she’s a genie, couldn’t she bring her crush to life? (Yes, that’s a long shot, but wouldn’t that have been great?)
Outside of the McCarthy-led highlights, Genie is a flimsy yet recycled story of two genres, repacked under your Christmas tree. The laughs are only amusing at best. The holiday spirit is half-hearted, the themes are shallow, and there is not enough story to justify a feature-length film.
3/10
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