The idea of a hip-hop update of the old genii fantasy is potentially amusing but it receives no more in-depth a working out than having the genii emerge from a ghetto blaster (and that in turn only really becomes a hook to sell an accompanying soundtrack). The fantastical elements are bland – flying bicycles, magical rains of junk food, flying pieces of French toast – and have been conducted with the seeming expectation that the special effects will conjure the magic the film fails to directorially. There is an immensely irritating end where the film, having established a quite viable set of rules about only allowing the genii to materialize physical objects and not be able to affect destinies, flagrantly breaks these rules because a wish is made “with an honest heart”. As with many of these fantasy films, there is the underlying theme of the fantasy character coming to stand in for and ultimately reconcile the child with an absent parent. The film’s attempt to make a star out of pro-basketballer Shaquille O’Neal is woeful. O’Neal is not an actor and comes across with an, at most, dim-wittedly inoffensive amiability.