When workaholic Bernard comes home late again and therefore misses his daughter Eve’s birthday, his wife has had enough. She goes to her mother with Eve so that Bernard can think carefully about his priorities. When he accidentally rubs an antique jewelry box three times, to his horror, a 2,000-year-old djinn, Flora (Melissa McCarthy), emerges from it. The fact that djinns only grant three wishes is a misunderstanding, Flora tells Bernard when he has recovered from his shock: she can grant any wish. Converting emotions into a desired feeling is not possible, so Bernard must win back the hearts of his wife and daughter in some other way, with Flora providing (not always useful) assistance.
Genius is based on the BBC television film Bernard and the Genius (1991) by screenwriter Richard Curtis. He wrote it for his big break, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), many more romcoms followed, including Notting Hill and Love Actually. Like Love Actually plays Genius takes place around Christmas. Genius is certainly not Curtis’ best screenplay, it contains too much blandness. For example, we see the apparition Flora, who has not been summoned since the Middle Ages, washing her hair in a toilet bowl and she has experienced Jesus, “the big J”. A subplot about the Mona Lisa unnecessarily slows things down.
Halfway through, McCarthy has done her job and the film gets better, although it is not possible to avoid all kinds of Christmas clichés. Anyway, Genius is therefore intended as a heart-warming Christmas film: family is important and material goods are subordinate to love and attention. It works Genius ultimately narrow enough to achieve the warm Christmas feeling it strives for, but it does not reach the level of old Hollywood Christmas films such as The Bishop’s Wife (1947), which he was clearly inspired by.
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