Wishmaster . Tucson Weekly . 10-06-97

Wishmaster

DIRECTED BY: Robert Kurtzman

REVIEWED: 10-06-97

Ever since Scream, it's been tempting to see any movie with the name Wes Craven attached to it, even if he's only the "executive producer." Time to revise that plan, because Wishmaster is pure hokey schlock; predictable, formulaic and dumb. Its premise: that true genies, also known as Djinn, are not the happy-go-lucky creatures depicted by Barbara Eden and Robin Williams, but in fact evil smart-asses who want to turn the world into a giant S&M parlor. The only way a Djinn can do that is if the person who frees him asks for three wishes; fortunately he's just been freed by a feisty girls' basketball coach (Tammy Lauren) who keeps her wishes to herself by chanting "stillness" in a Brady Bunch-style voice-over. This unremitting wish-chastity is very frustrating to the genie (who talks in one of those low, glottal voices that there must be a rule all evil beings are supposed to have), so he gets revenge by offering wishes to her friends, then making them come true in all the wrong ways. If anybody in this movie had seen Bedazzled, they'd know that you have to word your wishes very carefully, saying things like "in a way so that nobody gets hurt" at the end. But no; soon the cheesy special effects go into overdrive, and people are vomiting their internal organs or getting their heads pulled off by piano wires. The bottom line: See Wishmaster at the drive-in, drunk, or not at all.

--Woodruff

Full Length Reviews
Wishmaster

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