Superfantagenio (1986)
aka Aladdin
Article 5998 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-15-2021
Directed by Bruno Corbucci
Featuring Bud Spencer, Luca Venantini, Janet Agren
Country: Italy
What it is: Pseudo-shopping-cart movie

A teenage boy finds Aladdin’s lamp and summons a genie who solves everyone’s personal problems when he isn’t drinking beer, annoying the cops and beating up people.

It’s an update of the Aladdin story in which the boy is named Al Haddin and the genie is played by Bud Spencer.  It plays out like a cheap imitation of a Disney shopping-cart movie and is an Italian movie shot in Miami.  Bud Spencer appears to putting forth the minimum amount of effort to put forward what can almost be called a performance, and the plot meanders in a way that makes you suspect the writers had only the vaguest idea of where they wanted the plot to go, if anywhere.  Yet, for all that, I’ll count my blessings, which is my way of saying better Bud Spencer than Franco Franchi.  Disney’s version of ALADDIN  a few years later would wipe memories of this one off the map.