A Thousand and One Nights

Credit has to go to the makers of this movie to step away from tradition and not make this retelling of the classic Aladdin story not totally serious, years before the Disney animated movie decided to more or less do the same. The tongue in cheek attitude does achieve some good results, the biggest and best being the casting of Phil Silvers as Aladdin's sidekick. He's a lot of fun, acting pretty goofy in most of his screen time. In fact, I kind of wished that Silvers had played the lead role rather than Cornel Wilde. I'm not saying that Wilde was a bad actor - he did show his talents in other movies - but in this particular adventure, he's made to come across as a kind of bland and generic Arabian Knights kind of hero. There's not much memorable about his character. Another problem with the movie is that there is not much in the way of action or special effects, something you've probably come to expect from movies of this kind. I'll admit the movie is never boring, it looks colorful and expensive, and with the humor the movie does manage to be kind of fun. But at the same time, you'll see hints of a movie whose full potential was not quite realized.