We’re plagued with remakes as it
is. New movie versions of Annie, Robocop,
Godzilla, and Gilligan's Island
are coming in 2014, along with TV-series versions of everything from Fargo to The Road To Bountiful.
Fortunately, the search for new
stars for these new/old shows has shifted from athletes to rap artists to
internet sensations and reality-TV stars. While this hasn’t brought us to the
point where Phil Robertson stars as Miss Hannigan (“Scrub them floors, girls;
you’re a-gonna be married in a couple months!”), it has upped the thespian
quotient somewhat. I don’t know what kind of acting chops you need to star in Something Borrowed, Something New or get
thrown by a Sit ‘n’ Spin through a plate-glass window, but it has to be more
than what it takes to drain stepback three-pointers. And more importantly, it’s
quelled the clamor to remake Kazaam.
You’ve probably forgotten Kazaam; I had until I stumbled upon this
promo card this morning, and I’d really liked my life up to that point. But Kazaam brings back memories I’m not sure
I want to remember.
For those of you who are not
completely up to speed on pooch-screwing, shark-jumping, egg-sucking movies of
the late ‘80s and ‘90s, Kazaam was a
thinly veiled (no pun intended) remake of Aladdin,
with Shaquille O’Neal in the Robin Williams role.
Shaquille O’Neal as a
seven-foot-one, three-hundred pound genii that grins a lot, wears size-18
curly-toed velvet slippers, sports a Superman tattoo, talks like a cement mixer
full of stove bolts, raps with the rhythmic sensibilities of Flo, and can’t
shoot free throws: Why didn’t I think of that? And better yet, why didn’t I
think of throwing myself on top of that puppy of a license like a Sgt. Rock
hero flinging himself onto a live grenade to save the rest of his platoon?
I couldn’t do that last thing,
because Donruss beat me to it.
When I think of non-sports
cards, I don’t immediately think “Donruss.” And when I think “Donruss non-sport
cards,” my mind trips back pleasantly to Odd Rods and images of Bill Spaceman
Lee lookalikes stuffed into GTOs with engines the size of the Sears Tower
protruding from the hood. I had actually forgotten that Donruss, just like
every other cardmaker flush with sport-card loot, had gamboled barefoot through
the poison ivy of the non-sport market in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
A smorgasbord of licenses and
properties were laid out before these rich, innocent cardmakers. Some of the
properties were jewels, some were paste, and some were the toneless, plotless
brainchildren of committees of bean-counting corporate yes-men doing their best
Wolf of Wall Street impersonations,
movies that made Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate look like Seven Samurai and The Seventh Seal.
And then, underneath those, was Kazaam.
It's no My Giant, that's for sure. And acting-wise, Shaq is no Georghe Muresan.
Since I had to read the copy on
the promo card, you need to share my pain. “This summer, Shaquille O’Neal
materializes into theaters in Kazaam,
a major motion picture featuring Shaq in his first movie role as a
wise-crackin’ Genie for the ‘90s,” the card reads. “And you can collect all of
Shaq’s magic in Kazaam Trading Cards exclusively from Donruss this summer!”
And then, underneath this
deathless prose, lest you get any ideas to the contrary, the card sports another
big “Exclusively from Donruss.”
No problem, dude. You got this
one all to yourself, free and clear.
You can see what Donruss was
thinking. It couldn’t be any more transparent if their corporate skull was made out
of cellophane. Shaq sells. Shaq sells. Anything Shaq sells. A Shaq movie’s
gonna sell. And a Shaq card set of a Shaq movie has to sell. Right? RIGHT?
Amazingly, Shaq is not the worst
thing about Kazaam. (He’s not the
best thing either, but only because there is no sense in using the word “best”
around Kazaam.) The
worst thing is the slogan: “He's A Rappin' Genie With An Attitude ... And He's
Ready For Slam-Dunk Fun!” The second-worst thing is the plot, which was fished
out of a dumpster behind Nickelodeon’s world headquarters. The third-worst
thing is the kid lead, Francis Capra, who is so one-dimensional that he makes the
Sprouse twins in The Suite Life on Deck
look like they’re going to jump out of the screen and plop in your lap. The fourth-worst thing is Shaq’s
outfit. His Laker warmups would have been a far better choice than the
neo-Babylonian tunic with cardboard bracelets. (The slippers are cool, though.
They are without question the best part of the movie. In fact, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
and Kazaam are the only two movies
where the best thing about them is the shoes.)
The fifth-worst thing is Shaq.
Given the essential dreckiness
of the movie, could there be any hope for the cards? Of course not. Kazaam the card set is even more formulaic
than Kazaam the movie. There actually
was trading-card potential here; a bad movie does not automatically translate into a lazy, indifferent set. Donruss could have cut
up the slippers and made SlipperCards, or donated Shaq’s pants to a family
needing emergency shelter. But Donruss was too far removed from its Odd Rod
days to have any ideas on how to fun up a set of cards where the major
characters are a basketball-star-turned-cheesy-genie, a nondescript kid, and a
boombox. Donruss was just meatballin', trotting out the tired old formula in the service of a movie whose most effective marketing tactic was distracting people's attention from the movie. Uncle Allen Caplan would have known what to do with Kazaam, that’s for sure.
Sometimes we lose sight of the
fact that trading cards are a disposable medium. Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it. Fortunately, a Kazaam comes along every now and then to remind us.
Hard as it may be to believe, Kazaam did not represent the nadir of
Donruss’ dalliance with the movies. We’ll go there next time.
In the
meantime, if you’re an 11-year-old orphan girl, you’d best stay out of North
Louisiana and away from strange old guys with beards. Not even Shaq’s
gonna help you there.
