Geekmas Viewing – Bernard And The Genie

There is one Christmas tradition to which I adhere even more relentlessly than I do to my insistence of being drunk by noon on Christmas eve and remaining as such until approximately the 27th of December. Because before we roll out the brandy (and the wine, and the gin, and the dubious liqueurs no one drinks except at Christmas) there must be at least one solid hour in which I can sit and remain entirely undisturbed for the duration of Bernard And The Genie.

Before Richard Curtis became associated with the Christmas movies in the form of Love Actually, he made a much earlier and far more joyous, fantasy-fulfillment of a film. Starring Alan Cumming (X-Men 2, Tin Man) and Lenny Henry (founder of Comic Relief, stand-up comedian and former husband of Dawn French) this 1991 TV movie wormed its way into my childhood and has remained there ever since. It can be, I will admit, surprisingly hard to get hold of an authentic copy on DVD. Up until recently in fact I was still watching the VHS my parents recorded when I was eight, mauled and fuzzy as it was. It’s just that sort of movie. It’s been repeated a few times since then but with nowhere near the frequency that it deserves.

But despite its age, its utterly dated appearance and the fact that even the genuine DVD is taken from a VHS-quality print, Bernard And The Genie has something that can’t be underestimated, and that’s pure, wide-eyed, un-cynical delight.

Art dealer Bernard Bottle (Alan Cumming) is a doormat of a man. His bully of a boss, Charles Pinkworth (Rowan Atkinson, still at the height of his Blackadder fame) fires him for being too nice, and he returns home only to find that his girlfriend is now sleeping with his best friend Kevin behind his back (a suitably smarmy appearance by singer Lilly Allen’s uncle, Kevin Allen.) Bernard is the very picture of misery. He’s lonely, it’s almost Christmas and his only companion is the compulsive-liar who operates the lift in his building. In fact after his girlfriend moves out and takes all the furniture with her, the only thing Bernard has left is the antique oil lamp he was given the year before. In a fit of melancholy he gives it a bit of a rub to try and clean it off and after the ensuing explosion he comes to with a mild concussion, a severely singed testicle, and a slightly insane genie running rampant in his flat.

The genie is Josephus (Lenny Henry) a smooth-operator from first-century Palestine who did something rather unfortunate to a wizard’s daughter and was cursed into the lamp. Released for the first time in two thousand years, there is so much delight to be had just in the concept alone. With the combination of 90s fish-out-of-water adventures (which are almost a joke unto themselves at this point) while utilising wishes to fulfill all manner of fantasises, it’s about as far from Aladdin as you can get given the nature of the story.

Josephus and Bernard (Lenny Henry and Alan Cumming)

Because really, who never spent an idle moment wondering what they’d do if they had a genie at their command? And better yet, one not limited to the traditional three wishes? Bernard’s decisions are, on the most part, so genuinely well-intentioned it acts as a sweetly seasonal undercurrent to a story that is essentially about friendship and loneliness. The relationship between Bernard and Josephus develops some real affection in the course of the film, each one slightly lost and out of place, and they kind of end up fixing one another with an almost bittersweet familiarity. There are unexpectedly emotional moments snuck into the comedy with a subtlety I feel Curtis failed to achieve in some of his more recent works, and although the movie is now quite obviously dated I don’t think that really harms it.

It also has a particularly good soundtrack, with classics from the likes of Slade, Wizard and Mud, songs that to this day are cultural staples of the season in the UK. Other musical contributions come from BBC maestro Howard Goodall, the man responsible for the theme tunes of programs like Red Dwarf, QI, The Vicar of Dibley, Mr Bean, Blackadder… Honestly if it was on the BBC and it has a theme tune you remember, Howard Goodall probably wrote it. Though here too, you do feel the creeping of time. As the opening song (Mr Success) so memorably states, “From the shine on his shoes, to the stars in his eyes, if he were a girl he’d be Princes Di,” which is a sentiment that at the time was meant in an entirely genuine and un-ironic fashion.

It also features a seemingly random array of cameo appearances from celebrities of the day, from football star Gary Lineker, at the height of his sporting career, and broadcasters like Melvyn Bragg and Vincent Hanna, to a surprisingly self-deprecating turn by Bob Geldoff. Some of them are people who have lost any sense of topical context in the intervening twenty years. But these are things that, for me, don’t matter. These are the things of my childhood, and if you don’t find yourself wanting to answer “A car, and a train, and three Nintendos,” in the voice of a six year old boy every time someone asks what you want for Christmas, or concluding letters with “Yours, in crayon…” you’ve probably missed the point.

Cumming won the Best Newcomer award at the British Comedy Awards in 1992 for his performance as Bernard, and although he was a respected theatre performer before that, this really does mark the beginning of his film career. It’s a sweet, joy of a film. I’ve watched it every Christmas for almost twenty years, and even though I could probably recite it backwards by now, it still never fails to put a smile on my face and some seasonal cheer into my cold, cynical little heart.