{"id":6381,"date":"2011-12-18T18:39:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T08:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6381"},"modified":"2014-05-03T18:18:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T08:18:19","slug":"bernard-and-the-genie-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6381","title":{"rendered":"Bernard and the Genie [1991]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two thousand years ago, a genie is imprisoned inside a lamp by an evil wizard in Arabia.\u00a0 He remains there, locked in his tiny ornamental prison until the Nineties when a foppish British art curator Bernard Bottle (Alan Cumming) comes to have the lamp in his possesion.\u00a0 Although it is Christmas, Bernard is having a tough time of it.\u00a0 He has been fired from his job by the evil art gallery owner Pinkworth (Rowan Atkinson) and his girlfriend has just left him for his best friend.\u00a0 At home, jobless and lonely before Christmas, Bernard absent-mindedly rubs the lamp to release a hyperactive LENNY HENRY in tights and a turban.\u00a0 Bernard comes to form a close friendship with his new Genie friend.\u00a0 He gets an endless supply of wishes and over the course of the rest of the film, he gets his revenge on his evil boss and unfaithful girlfriend.\u00a0 Along the way, he introduces Genie to the wonders of Nineties living – junk food, Arnold Schwarznegger films and MC Hammer pants.<\/p>\n

I absolutely adore Bernard and the Genie.<\/em>\u00a0 I was introduced to it by Mike and Matt a couple of years after it first aired.\u00a0 It is exquisitely Nineties in its cheerful optimism, terrible clothing and shockingly unabashed worship of consumerism.\u00a0 How can you not appreciate the cheesy schmatlz of a film with the tagline You’ll believe nylon carpets can fly<\/em>!<\/p>\n

This entertaining all ages film is so sweet natured and precious, as embodied by Cumming in his portrayal of Bernard.\u00a0 How else to describe a film in which a man is fired under outrageous circumstances and loses his girlfriend to his best friend but comes out feeling on top at the end of the film when he cheers himself up by buying a big bucket of KFC, some Pizza Hut and McDonalds burgers (that are served in glorious styrofoam boxes).\u00a0 He doesn’t get back his job, his best friend or his girlfriend but by God, the man gets his own box of fried chicken!\u00a0 When I first watched this at the age of ten, I felt that was a pretty reasonable trade off.<\/p>\n

I think Hollywood used this time honoured storyline to find a more broader audience with Bedazzled<\/em> which cast Brendan Fraser in the Bernard role and an absolutely smoking hot Elizabeth Hurley as Genie.\u00a0 Naturally, that movie grossed a million billion dollars whereas this film is probably remembered fondly by about five people.<\/p>\n

Still, when it comes to this time of year, this is one of my favourite Christmas films to watch.\u00a0 I can’t believe its twenty years old now.\u00a0 It’s a feel good movie thats deeply silly and a joy to behold.<\/p>\n

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A Christmas classic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1800,5],"tags":[1129,238,1130],"class_list":["post-6381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-classics","category-films","tag-alan-cumming","tag-christmas","tag-mcdonalds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6381"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14308,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions\/14308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}