KAZAAM is one of those movies we all know as a punchline because “Shaquille O’Neal as a rapping genie” sounds more like a fake movie inside another movie than an actual thing that exists. The only one that’s guaranteed less existent is the other genie movie starring Sinbad that somehow became a shared delusion of millennials? I don’t even want to think about that shit.

But until now I hadn’t actually seen KAZAAM. It’s as ridiculous as I imagined and no higher in quality, but I suppose kind of different in some ways, so I found that mildly interesting. What I didn’t know from the reputation and the poster is that it follows in the tradition of some of the ‘80s comedies where it’s ostensibly a kids movie about baby shit but also it has crime and violence treated seriously, like an action movie of the time. Or at least the criminals are treated seriously. There’s a fight scene with genie Shaq throwing people through walls and it’s obviously pretty cartoony, but I noticed the stunt coordinator was Jeff Imada (RAPID FIRE, THE CROW) and stunt performers in the movie include Billy Blanks, James Lew and Jeannie Epper (seen earlier in the summer in the re-release of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS).

It’s also set in the New York City of ‘80s movies – a land of graffiti, litter, abandoned buildings, dance clubs run by organized crime, and foot (or bike) chases. Within these borders lies an abandoned lamp store (with a magic genie type lamp as the logo) which, during the opening credits, is hit by a wrecking ball, causing a magic genie type lamp to fall off a cobwebbed shelf onto a boombox. Later our protagonist Max Connor (Francis Capra, FREE WILLY 2: THE ADVENTURE HOME) will accidentally bump the boombox while trying to avoid an ass-beating, so he’ll meet a 7’ 1” magical being (O’Neal in his first starring role, having been in BLUE CHIPS) who at first he’ll think is just a tall weirdo following him around. (His powers take a bit to kick back in.)

Max seems like he’s supposed to be a little streetwise badass because he’s strutting in the halls during class wearing a huge vest, making faces through classroom windows, keying the lockers, but then he gets yanked into the bathroom by bullies who spraypaint around him and threaten him. He tricks them by giving them a key and claiming it belongs to a building where they can get “a real score” of “Rolexes, gold chains, who knows what.” It’s weird that these bullies are treated as serious, threatening characters when they can be so easily outsmarted, but I guess the other option (playing wacky music whenever they enter and talking in dumb guy voices) would be ten times worse.

I’m sure not too many have complimented the story by director Paul Michael Glaser (THE RUNNING MAN) and screenplay by Christian Ford & Roger Soffer (story credit on one episode of Deep Space Nine), but I will at least give them credit for limiting Kazaam’s powers. “I do material wishes. Things, stuff,” he says. So they don’t have to get into alternate timelines and shit. However, I have to take away points for having the kid decide to not make his third wish so Kazaam will be forced to follow him around indefinitely. “I own you!,” he says, so there is some THE TOY style racial discomfort there.

However, at the task of being kind of funny and lovable as a kid’s best friend in a shitty movie even though you’re a professional basketball player and not an actor, I think Shaq does well here. He seems like he’s having a fun time at least.

I think it’s fairly widely acknowledged now that as far as people famous for something else who become rappers, Shaq is surprisingly decent. He already had two more-legit-than-expected albums before this, Shaq Diesel (1993) and Shaq Fu: Da Return (1994). So they’re able to have him hear Max rhyme and say “That’s wack! That’s horrible! Oh my god, that’s awful!” Of course, this leads into a pre-recorded rap duet between the two. Capra’s verses are dubbed by Wade Robson, who I think plays one of the bullies too. (Yes, he’s one of Michael Jackson’s alleged victims.)

The songs are corny, the kid rapping is torture, and I definitely prefer when he’s doing rhyming incantations to when he does songs, but with a different guy it would’ve been worse.

I noticed multiple scenes where Kazaam’s head is beaded with sweat. In one of them, women in the club towel him off, like it’s sexy. I assume this has to be a reference to his basketball career, but I just want to say as a guy who gets too sweaty in the summer I was jealous that he’s so un-self-conscious about it that he purposely puts it in a movie. And not, like, BODY HEAT or something where they’re trying to show how hot it is.

Like THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, this seems to be building a little bit off of the type of special effects that were done in THE MASK, using cg to cartoonify live action. The visual effects were actually done by the same company as THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, Rhythm & Hues, who had just hit it big with BABE. KAZAAM’s FX setpieces include when Kazaam’s bike turns into a flying chariot spewing magical sparks of magicness

when he makes it rain burgers, french fries and candy

when Max interrupts his date by appearing in his glass of water

and best of all when Kazaam pulls a THE TOXIC AVENGER PART II and squooshes a guy into the shape of a basketball

Glaser tries to ground the movie in emotion like E.T. or some shit, so Max is very upset that his nice mom (Ally Walker, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER) plans to marry her boyfriend Travis (John Costelloe, KISS OF DEATH) and he storms out whining “WHAT ABOUT ME!? WHAT ABOUT ME!?” Coincidentally he runs into the father who abandoned him (James Acheson, “Cop in bathroom,” STRANGE DAYS), now a hotshot talent agent who knows Da Brat and Spinderella. He’s excited to see his son and shows him off to everybody but later is revealed to be involved in pirating music with club owner Malik (Marshall Manesh, TRUE LIES), who (presumably due to his ethnic heritage) figures out Kazaam is a genie and wants to control him.

Kazaam falls for an easy trick proving he’s an ancient being: “Nubian goat eyes? I haven’t had these in three thousand… days.” Also he off-handedly admits to Max that he was responsible for the destruction of Pompeii. He tells Max’s mom he’s a tutor named “Jefferson Allensworth Lamb,” performs raps at the club, and gets a girlfriend (Fawn Reed, CITY DRAGON) who at first is a spy but turns into a sweetheart. Like Sandy in FLIPPER, Max brags about having all access passes (though just to a club where Spinderella performs one song, not to a full on Red Hot Chili Peppers concert), and his bullies force him to steal a valuable master tape.

I guess what makes this so tonally weird is the simple fact that it seems – despite everything – like a real movie. It’s a big production with both on location and soundstage scenes, and it’s shot well (cinematographer: Charles Minsky, APRIL FOOL’S DAY, PRETTY WOMAN). People are trying to make a professional movie. Since it’s not just a shitty 3 NINJAS type cinematic fart, it feels very weird that with 15 minutes left the bad guy pushes the kid down an elevator shaft, he dies, the genie has to fight and kill the bad guys, then he holds the kid’s dead body and screams “NOOOOO!!!” and laments letting him die while he was busy rapping, but luckily levels up to a djinn and resurrects him. And then we’re supposed to be touched that his father makes amends before giving himself up to the law, and that the kid now accepts his new stepfather, and that the genie gets to live on earth with his special lady friend. Spoiler.

Apparently the movie came out of Glaser and his son meeting Shaq through a manager friend, the friend asking if he knew of any roles for Shaq and Glaser saying “He should play a genie.” Why the fuck would he say that? I guess Disney’s ALADDIN was pretty recent at the time. It was originally at Warner Brothers, though, and they were already making SPACE JAM with Michael Jordan. I guess they were excited about the iconic basketball player + special effects = family classic formulation, but for some reason got cold feet about this one. What did they know that Touchstone Pictures didn’t?

KAZAAM was a box office failure, it was terribly reviewed, and today I’m not sure it’s anybody’s sincere favorite other than for nostalgia. But it certainly hasn’t been forgotten. The Jimmy-Jam-&-Terry-Lewis-produced soundtrack did well, with two charting singles (“Wishes” by Nathan Morris and “I’ll Make Your Dreams Come True” by Subway). Also featured are Usher, Shyheim, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Immature, Backstreet Boys and the three Shaq songs. Finally, the album is the answer to a trivia question, because the song “Key to My Heart” is the first appearance of P!nk (as teenage lead singer of the white R&B trio Choice).

Glaser was, of course, Starsky from Starsky & Hutch. He used his success as an actor to get into directing episodes of that show, then Miami Vice, which led to BAND OF THE HAND. KAZAAM is his fifth and final theatrical feature, but he kept doing TV for another decade plus.

Thirteen years after KAZAAM, Capra appeared in BLOOD AND BONE. Also, two of the kids in the class room scene grew up to be the Trost brothers, who directed THE FP and AN AMERICAN PICKLE. O’Neal was able to do one more starring vehicle (STEEL) before just doing little guest appearances and cameos like most athletes. I mean he’s in HE GOT GAME and FREDDY GOT FINGERED, that’s not a bad career. He also released three albums after the movie: You Can’t Stop the Reign (1996), Respect (1998) and Gorilla Warefare (2023).

* * *

tie-ins:

Unsurprisingly there were trading cards, and a Scholastic junior novelization by Nicholas Edwards (creator of Santa Paws) as well as a picture book by Nancy E. Krulik (M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice: The Hip-hop Never Stops). I was more impressed that there was a Taco Bell kids meal with four different toys!

And I saw this backpack on eBay:

and this lunchbox:

and this pin:

and a couple t-shirts, this being the best one:

And there’s a kids bike but it’s a pretty regular bike with the movie logo in a couple spots.