The good thing about watching movies years after they come out is that you can form a nuanced opinion without the influence of the cultural reception at the time. Watching Kazaam taught me that there's nothing nuanced about how terrible this movie is. You heard it was bad. I heard it was bad. We can now agree that there's nothing clouding our judgment.This movie reeks of the decade it was made in. Physically-incapable-of-acting basketball star Shaq is the title character, a genie that lives in a boombox. The protagonist of the movie is Max, a bratty kid that finds Kazaam in an abandoned building. We're supposed to sympathize with Max because he's bullied, but he's such a little jerk that it's actually cathartic to watch him get bullied. Kazaam and Max make an unlikely pair, not just because a 7 foot tall black man follows a little white boy around New York like a lost puppy, but also because Kazaam wants to go through the three wishes to gain his freedom (and hopefully get far, far away from this kid), and Max, in a completely realistic and tightly written portrayal of the selfish child that he is, decides that he doesn't want to use any of the magic wishes his genie is begging him to make. The "plot" of the film revolves around Max learning that his mother lied to him all these years and that his father actually lives in the city, so he goes off to see his father for the first time in however many years (Kazaam is along for the ride). He's crushed to find out that his dad is a total sleazebag (like father like son) music executive and eventually it's up to Kazaam to use his miraculous powers not to end poverty, war or world hunger but to mend this broken white family. There's another sleazebag that figures out Kazaam is a genie and plots to steal him out from under Max.If you found Shaq's non-acting to be distressing, prepare yourself for the trauma that is his rapping. This movie fails in just about every conceivable way. A story about a kid and his genie should be pretty straightforward but somehow, most of the characters are unlikable, the plot is dull and predictable, and I'll sound like a broken record if I keep talking about the acting. Space Jam, this is not.

Bad movies are easy to fault, 'Kazaam' is a total mystery, a movie that goes wrong from the very basic concept. I could not figure out how anyone thought that casting basketball great Shaquille O'Neal as a genie was a good idea. How in the world do you convince anyone to spend millions of dollars on this concept? I could argue that it's an ad for Shaq as a product but the movie showcases none of the charm and talent that have made him a star athlete. So what's the point? The pathetic stab at a story involves a lonely kid who finds a boom box in the wreckage of an old building. Suddenly out pops a 5,000-year-old genie that grants him three wishes. Therein lies the first question – How could a 5,000 year old genie live in an object that has probably been around only about 10 years? Kazaam gives the kid a mountain of candy that falls from the sky and therein lies the second question – How does he know what candy is and how does he know how to materialize them in wrappers that he has never seen? I also put this question to the mountain bike that he presents to the kid. Kazaam's boom box was found the wreckage of a building. Somehow I feel like I've given more thought to this script then they did.As for the kid, he's played by Francis Capra, a young actor the I liked in Robert De Niro's 'A Bronx Tale' a few years back. In that film he was likable, bright and always seemed to be listening when the other actors were speaking to him, not just waiting for his cue. Here that's all gone, he's bored and never seems to be trying. It's kind of like watching Maculay Culkin in his worst films.'Kazaam' is tired. I'm not just talking about the script or idiotic idea of casting Shaquille O'Neal as a genie but I mean this movie is paced so lethargically that it made me tired just watching it do nothing. This is what I call a 'door movie', because the filmmakers don't care what you see on screen because after you've paid the admission and gone through the door, their job is basically done.

I've just started watching my way through IMBDs bottom 100 and this definitely belongs there, I'm pretty sure it deserves to be higher up than number 99 too. I've seen a video review of this so I kind of knew what to expect but it turned out to be so much worse. The other two films from the list that I've seen so far were immensely boring because nothing ever happened in them. This one at least had some action in it but every single thing that happened was just stupid. Now, I can enjoy stupid movies; films that are so bad they become funny, this one though was painfully unfunny. On top of that, the film is in the mid 90's and the film makers make that abundantly clear with the way people dress and above all the horrible hip hop music playing throughout the film. It reminds me of all the bad things about the 90's and none of the good ones. By far the worst thing though is Kazaam himself who, despite being thousands of years old is hip, but not in a good way, and goes around rhyming every sentence he utters like some kind of idiotic hip hop artist. That Shaq can't rap doesn't exactly make it any better.This whole thing feels like a bad 90's music video - starring an untalented rapper - drawn out to a full length feature.

Well, adolescent really(19). Like Howard the Duck, Kazaam was a movie I loved as a child but looking back on it I was shocked at how low my taste buds were as a kid. Granted, there are some funny moments specifically the ones with the flying toasts and the bicycle race. And it is not the worst movie of 1996, Ed and especially Bio Dome are worse. However, the special effects are really quite substandard, and the rest of the production values are of direct to video quality and shoddy ones at that. The story is predictable with only a few worthwhile scenes to favour, the sight gags suffer from poor comic timing and the script is childish and simplistic. The characters I really dislike here, the kid is annoying, the villain is one of the lamest I have seen in a long time while Shaquille O'Neal's Genie with his awful rapping(then again I dislike rap intensely, and that is the least problematic of his performance) grated on me fast. The acting doesn't fare much better either, while the direction is literally non-existent and the soundtrack is only tolerable if on mute. This is of course my opinion, disagree all you want, I guess I just didn't like it. 2/10 Bethany Cox