Being brought to us by the awesome George Miller (check out his Mad Max: Fury Road and Happy Feet) and being described as “Aladdin for adults” I was pretty excited to check out Three Thousand Years of Longing. Now before I get into my thoughts on the movie, I have to talk about the main trailer that was released before this came out.
How to Download Three Thousand Years of Longing
Sometime after its theatrical release, Three Thousand Years of Longing should be available for download and you will be able to download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review to check the current availability.
The Movie Review
This is one of those “bait and switch” type trailers where the trailer really does not showcase what the movie is at all. Because of the trailer, I went into this thinking it was going to be a weird, zany, and fun romantic comedy-type movie, but that is not the case. I would put this more in the category of romantic drama than comedy.
Our main two characters are great and I do like the chemistry that they have. The movie stars, Tilda Swinton as a lonely and kind of weird scholar called, Alithea. Alithea is on a trip to Istanbul where in a market she finds this trinket that she really likes the look of. She takes it back to her hotel room and while cleaning it, opens it up.
This is no ordinary trinket/bottle. This was home to a powerful Djinn that is played by Idris Elba and he offer Alithea three wishes of her heart’s desire. What I liked here was how Althia just kind of goes along with this, but she is pretty smart about it too. Questioning the Djinn’s motives and asking if there is any trickery, dangers, and whatnot to making these wishes.
To try and show her that he is for real, Djinn tells her about his life and the other people that have used his magic in the past. We get to see events from many different periods of history and how the Djinn was involved and this was pretty cool. You get to see a fair bit of this in the trailer, but I was surprised at how this was not the main focus of the movie.
While the flashback scenes with the Djinn are fantastic and as this is a George Millar movie they look amazing. Most of the movie feels like it takes place in the hotel room with Djinn and Alithea talking. Do not get me wrong, this is great for character development and the relationship between the two, but it is another way in which the trailer was very misleading.
In typical Tilda Swinton fashion, Alithea is very strange and odd and you do kind of want her to be happy. However, you also want the Djinn to be happy too, but the final act of the movie feels rather forced and out of place and weird, like even weird for a movie about a Djinn!
I know that there are some people that are absolutely in love with this movie and I can kind of see why. For me, it was ok, it was not the movie I thought I was going to be watching, but I still had a decent time with it. I do feel it is worth giving it a try, but it is certainly not this wacky and fun-filled romantic comedy that the trailer makes it out to be.
