I'm not going to sugar coat this at all. This movie sucked. I mean really really sucked. In fact, I would venture to say that Shaquille O'Neal should stick to basketball. Sure, he's not terribly good at that, but he is really tall. I remember when the whole Shaq craze started. He was supposed to be the next Michael Jordan, so he sold his soul to Pepsi and became a media god. Well, maybe not a god, per se, more of a media whore. I mean, let's be honest. The guy's really big, so he suddenly thinks he's a rapper, an actor, and a Kung Fu video game character? Remember Shaq Fu? What was that all about? It's ridiculous. Anyway, at one point in his illustrious acting career, Shaq decided to hit the crappy, forgettable kids' movie market. You know what kind of movie I'm talking about. They're always PG and marketed toward pre-teens, and they always have some sort of lesson to be learned at the end. Well, this one's no different.
Max is a bratty kid who thinks he's really cool, skips class, and routinely gets his lunch money stolen from the bullies at school. Think Bart Simpson without the charm. After school, one day, the bullies are chasing him because he gave them false information about a locker filled with money and gold and stuff. These guys are pretty dumb to believe that. Anyway, Max had no reason to tell them that in the first place. In other words, it's a plot device to put Max in the same room as the genie. Now, as we all know, genies live in lamps. Then the lamp is rubbed, the genie pops out and grants three wishes. Well, Max just happens to hide in an old run-down lamp shop, and all the lamps are broken or gone, but there's a large cassette player (or boom box, as the kids say) which somehow gets turned on in the scuffle. Max tries to turn it off, and, at the last possible moment, a genie pops out. But this is no ordinary genie. This genie is really tall, and he speaks in rhyme. The genie's name is Kazaam, and he wants Max to make his three wishes so he can go back to sleep for another few thousand years. The catch is this: The wishes have to be material wishes. No love or success or intangibles. Reluctantly, Max wishes for a bunch of junk food. After he eats a candy bar, he goes home. No one says anything about the large pile of junk food in the vacant lot.
Max goes home, and his mother, played by The Profiler's Ally Walker, who can actually act, but whose talent is wasted on movies like this and Universal Soldier, is upset, which is understandable. She's got this bratty kid who's always getting into trouble, and she really wants the best for him. She's got the boyfriend who means well, but has no clue about parenting. She's got the estranged husband with whom she's just started divorce proceedings. To top all that off, she's constantly being harrassed by that Jack guy. Well, like I said, she's upset about Max's coming home late, especially since she and her boyfriend, whose name eludes me, have something important to discuss. You see, they want to get married, but she, being a good mother, wants to talk about it with Max first. Max doesn't like the idea because he still thinks that his mom and dad will get back together.
Max and Kazaam go to find Max's dad, named Nick, and it turns out he's a big record exec. Ok, he's a small record exec. Ok, he's a corporate pawn with the illusion of power. Max and Nick are reunited, and Nick, as it turns out, is a big jerk. Max thinks there's still good in him, and he confronts him. A big duel ensues and Nick's master starts electrocuting Max. Meanwhile, Nick is confronted with a dilemma. Should he save his son or serve his master? At the last possible second, Nick lifts his master and throws him into the bottomless pit. Max drags Nick to the shuttle in an attempt to rescue him, but Nick tells him it's ok. He's already been saved. Nick closes his eyes and dies. Max narrowly escapes the blast from the exploding Death Star and is reunited with his friends on Endor.
Hey, I'm allowed to dream.
Well, what really happened is this. Max and Kazaam go to a concert which is being recorded for a live album. Kazaam starts rappin' about being a genie, and Max gets kicked out by his dad. Max tells the bullies that his dad is a record exec, and he knows where to get the master tape from the concert. Evidently, you can get an entire concert on a 90 minute cassette and have it all mixed down and ready for production by the time the concert's over. So the bullies go in and steal the tape. This is bad because Nick's boss needs the tape, and if Nick doesn't get it to him, he's dead. So, Max wishes for the tape and gives it to his dad, who's still a jerk. Then Max wishes for a second chance for Nick, but Kazaam can't grant it because it's not material. Meanwhile, the evil boss figures out that Kazaam's a genie, which any idiot could have done, since it's all he talks about. He might as well go up to strangers and say, "Hi. My name's Kazaam. I'm a genie." Well, the boss wants Kazaam, so he tries to kill off Max by pushing him offscreen, and Kazaam almost gets sucked into his boom box, but he wishes he can stay in the real world. Oddly enough, he grants his own wish. What's more, Max isn't really dead, do there was no reason for Kazaam to make a wish in the first place. Kazaam turns the boss into a ball and throws him somewhere, and somehow, he (Kazaam) stops being a genie and becomes a god-like entity. And Max's wish for his dad comes true, which was really a waste, since Nick's getting sent off to jail anyway.
This was a really bad movie. I'm almost sorry that the review's so long, but it's just really bad. If there's anything I learned from this movie it's that basketball players and bratty white kids shouldn't try to rap.