![]() ![]() ![]() True, Kazaam’s flow might be stilted and his rhymes embarrassing and borderline incompressible, but who can’t relate to music about the aggravations of being forced to grant wishes and not being able to leave the broken boom box you’re imprisoned in? Sexy, sexy clockwork Just because this Travis fellow can perform oral sex on our hero’s mother for hours, even days at a time, bringing her to undreamed of heights of sensual bliss doesn’t mean that he poses a threat to Max’s relationship with his mom but that doesn’t keep Max from hating him and desperately seeking Nick’s love and approval even if, to paraphrase the title of a Shaquille O’Neal single that reduces me to tears every time I listen to it, his biological didn’t bother. I will just have to assume that the reason Max resents Travis is because he can hear the screams of orgasmic joy the firefighter brings his mother for hours at a time every night like clockwork. The sexy firefighter even saves Max from a fire even though he's been a total dick to him the whole movie. So why not make a live-action riff on Aladdin casting the superstar athlete as a rapping genie who imparts life lessons to a troubled, angry white kid who doubles as a surrogate for the movie’s target audience when not busting dope rhymes or doing physical comedy?įrancis Capra plays Max, the aforementioned angry white boy/audience surrogate, a juvenile delinquent haunted at school by bullies who push him to the ground, outline his body in green spray paint and issue overly verbose taunts like, “It’s a math problem: If we took all the money from the dork on the floor, would it be enough?” and at home by the specter of her mother’s boyfriend Travis, a kind, gentle and loving firefighter who the obnoxious little twerp inexplicably hates even though he’s not just superior to his piece of shit father Nick (James Acheson), who abandoned him when he was two years old, but rather perfect in every way. Despite a stilted, clumsy flow and amateurish lyrics, he’d even managed to score a few hip hop hits. At the time of its release, Shaq was one of the famous, successful and beloved athletes in the world. On paper, Kazaam has a certain commercial logic. That's Shazaam. I’m talking about the other one, the one that stars rapper, actor, lawman and basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal that was poorly received and, unlike Shazaam, has not been honored by the National Film Registry as a film of historical and cultural importance. ![]() No, not the famous, successful, beloved, nearly identically titled Oscar and Nobel Prize-winning film of the same name from the same era famously starring Sinbad. I grew up poor and angry, lacked for most things and due to a series of bad choices and poor decisions, not to mention a series of crummy breaks, found myself re-watching a movie about a magical rapping genie from the 1990s who befriends a juvenile delinquent and saves him from entering a shadowy nightmare world of music piracy. Servants! Boarding schools! A loving and supportive mother who ensured that I never lacked for anything. I was raised with the best of everything. Weep not for me, dear reader, for this is the life I chose. I chose to see Kazaam when I could have picked literally anything else. All I know is that I have now watched Kazaam now twice.
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