9 Things That Confused and Perplexed Me While Watching Genie
She's a genie in a bottle, baby, and it rubbed me the wrong way.
I want to be clear about something: a movie where Melissa McCarthy plays an ancient genie who’s been living in a bottle for 2,000 years and is then summoned to present-day NYC is an objectively good idea.
I was fokken’ puuuumped to watch this movie. I was even sort of saving it for a special occasion; I had this idea that I had to suffer through X number of formulaic romcoms about small-town veterinarians before I earned Melissa McCarthy playing a genie in NYC. My special occasion turned out to be my first-ever case of vertigo (zero Christmas trees; do not recommend). At first I thought that was why I spent most of it being confused and perplexed, like the entire world was spinning and reality was just beyond my grasp. But that wasn’t it. These were it:
What kind of museum curator goes to an auction house to source new exhibit material at 7pm?
Why is he carrying that giant, ugly bear? (This question is never answered and will continue to take up too much space in my brain for the next 30 years.)
If Melissa McCarthy is a genie who has been living in a weird little box for 2,000 years, how does she know phrases like “sure thing, boss, whatever floats your boat?”
Why not world peace? Come on, dude. You have unlimited wishes from an all-powerful genie who can do anything except time travel and changing peoples’ feelings, and you don’t immediately default to world peace? World peace never even occurs to you? How about ending hunger and poverty, or permanently reversing global warming? Nope? Just wanna get your wife and daughter back, huh. Okay, fine. But then you’re gonna wish for world peace, right? RIGHT?!?!?
You have unlimited wishes from an all-powerful genie who can conjure literally any object or human being out of thin air, and you source Christmas presents for your estranged wife and daughter by….physically going to Bloomingdale’s?
If his mother-in-law lives in Jersey and his kid goes to school in Manhattan, why wouldn’t his wife wait one more day until school is out for the holiday break before decamping to her mother’s house? Do they have any idea what a pain in the ass that commute is?
This is not Rockefeller Center in December:
THIS is Rockefeller Center in December:
Okay so within one day of his wife saying they “need some space” he has literally shacked up with another woman, and at no point does his wife see this as a threat to her marriage? Like it’s more plausible to her that a 2,000-year-old genie has popped out of a bottle to grant unlimited wishes than it is that he’d be attracted to Melissa McCarthy? Can we all just take a moment to be fucking enraged at this on Melissa McCarthy’s behalf? Why you gotta keep putting up with this shit, Melissa? You’re beautiful, vibrant, and funny as fuck. Stop putting your name on movies where only skinny women get to be romantic leads. You deserve a sexier love interest than the old-ass doorman.
It seems like a lot of people are confused by the ending of this movie. Despite a teeny tiny doohickey in my inner ear making the entire world spin, I did not find this part confusing. What did confuse me is when she says, toward the end, that he’s the most selfless and generous genie-boss she’s ever met. Seriously? He didn’t even ask for world peace once. Like I would have asked for world peace first, and I am a selfish-ass motherfucker. Sheesh.
The TL;DR here is that I wanted this movie to be better than it was. Melissa McCarthy as a wise-cracking genie had so much potential, and yet…the incongruence between “ancient genie who has never seen the wonders of the modern world” and “wise-cracking actress whose words and mannerisms fully embody the modern world” never quite worked. It was just too…well, incongruent. And you know it’s not the concept itself that was flawed because, y’know, it’s worked out pretty well before.
So I am actually kind of bummed to be giving Genie only 3 kinda derpy gold pipe-cleaner Christmas trees.
