Arabian Nights is both fun and familiar
by Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe, Friday, 28 April 2000

..."Arabian Nights" is all that a network-event movie can be. It's a smartly written visually captivating piece of family entertainment that rarely lets its characters and plots get gobbled up by glitzy effects. Like many of today's slick, big-budget movies, it's not particularly memorable or emotionally cathartic. But as escapist fun with a brain, you can't beat it.
The theme of the two-parter... is the power of storytelling itself. And so it helps that "Arabian Nights" tells its stories with economy and careful pacing. An adaptation of "A Thousand and One Nights," its framing story has the clever Scheherazade trying to keep the angry sultan of Baghdad, her new husband, from executing her by regaling him with vivid tales, each of which we see. There's the rise and fall and rise of Aladdin; there's Bacbac the jester, whom everyone in town thinks they have killed; and there's Ali Baba, who outwits the 40 thieves led by the nefarious Black Coda. Gradually, as the sultan succumbs to the healing power of Scheherazade's stories, he softens, letting go of his bitterness at being betrayed by his first wife. And with the help of her stories, he also decides to face his own evil brother.
All of the stories within the story of Scheherazade and the sultan are charming little vignettes, even while they are familiar (and best left underanalyzed by moralists!). The costuming and the settings, filmed in Turkey, are all authentic, and, to use proper epicspeak, lavish. And the performances - except for John Leguizamo's wonderfully zany twofer as the Ring Genie and the Lamp Genie - are appealingly understated. Rufus Sewell is an Everyman of an Ali Baba, who discovers a cave of stolen riches and must trick the thieves he robs. And Jason Scott Lee makes his Aladdin into a romantic hero who uses the Lamp Genie more to win a princess than to be rich.
But the strongest performer is Mili Avital, an Israeli actress known here primarily as David Schwimmer's girlfriend. Her balance of intelligence and mysticism holds the movie together, as she struggles to win over the sultan because she feels it is her fate and because she sees the child in him. The Story of her attempts to save her own life, and the spiritual life of her husband, is as engaging as those she invents. As the murderous sultan, Dougray Scott is suitably creepy and paranoid. His transformation is smooth, and he makes a strong appearance in one of the tales, as a beggar who is made king for a day.
From the start, you'll know exactly where "Arabian Nights" is headed. There are no surprises in this beautifully wrapped package. But, like the sultan, you may find yourself hooked anyway. |||

Scheherazade's Tales, With Attitude
by Charles Strum, The New York Times Television, April 30-May 6 2000

THE MASTER STORYTELLER, swathed in coarse robes and sitting on a rug in Baghdad's ancient marketplace, dispenses wisdom as easily as he spins the fables that earn him a meager income. His storytelling enchants the grand vizier's daughter, Scheherazade. Urgently, she retains him as her marriage consultant. Starting to sound familiar?
Scheherazade (Mili Avital) is betrothed to the sultan (Dougray Scott) -- a sleep-deprived neurotic getting crazier by the minute -- who has decreed that because his first wife betrayed him he will have his future wives executed the morning after the wedding. Apparently he plans to go through the harem this way.
To rehabilitate her beloved -- the sweet playmate of her childhood -- and to guarantee life after marriage, Scheherazade has a plan for their first evening together. For this fateful night, the master storyteller (Alan Bates) offers encouragement:
"People need stories more than bread itself," he says. "They tell us how to live -- and why." Therein lies the seed of many a good yarn, six of them in this case, which ABC has chosen to retell in a lavish four-hour movie, "Arabian Nights."
There are two things this version of the old fables is decidedly not: It is not an animated feature by Disney, and it is not a remake of a 1950's plaster-temple epic. "Whenever the bad guys become too sinister or the heroes too outrageous, the script, by Peter Barnes, takes them all down a notch with tongue-in-cheek dialogue reminiscent of Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theater" on public television and Showtime.
Thus Ali Baba (Rufus Sewell) is a decent fellow who, for all the wealth he retrieves from the cave of the 40 thieves, retains a goofy Rube Goldberg streak as an entrepreneur. "It's a slow way to make a fortune," he remarks wistfully to his camel on a daylong trek for firewood outside Damascus. He muses on the possibility of watering plum trees with alcohol to make stewed prunes instead.
Then there's this exchange between the vizier and the court physician, who has determined that the sultan is being eaten by "the worm of madness."
VIZIER: "You're no help."
PHYSICIAN: "Patients often say that, but what do they know?"
VIZIER: "Shall I get a second opinion?"
PHYSICIAN: "Why not? I can come back tomorrow."
Filmed in Turkey and Morocco, the film has backdrops that range from sweeping deserts a la "Lawrence of Arabia" to the claustrophobia of the poorest Damascus apartment, circa A.D. 800. In Turkey, the cast and crew gathered about 400 miles southeast of Istanbul near Goreme, in the Cappadocia region. The terrain, formed millions of years ago by volcanic eruptions, created a thick layer of porous rock out of which the eventual inhabitants carved entire cities. Some of the original "Star Wars" was filmed there.
The locations were chosen to represent various far-flung locales f the mysterious East: Chinese mountains, the Yemeni desert, Constantinople, Syria, Cairo and Baghdad. The film has, if not a cast of thousands, certainly a cast of several hundred, not including the 150 camels from southeastern Morocco.
This "Arabian Nights" was a collaboration of Robert Halmi Sr., the executive producer and chairman of Hallmark Entertainment, and Steve Barron, the director, both of whom had been looking for something Arabian to do after working together on "Merlin."
Mr Barron, who grew up in England reading latter-day versions of Scheherazade's handiwork, said the company was on location for 16 weeks, starting last November, and survived torrential rains and heavy flooding in Turkey. Almost 50 sets were built on a new sound stage there. But that was far from inconvenient, Mr Barron said; the ability to shoot inside and outside in the same place made for efficient production. The budget approached $30 million -- a lot of money for television -- and Mr Barron said he had free rein. So why not spend a bit more and do a feature film for general release?
"In the world of Hollywood," Mr Barron said, "you'd get about five years of development where the film would not be allowed to be so episodic. It doesn't conform to the Hollywood formula. The easiest way is for Robert Halmi to go his own way and say, 'I'm doing "Arabian Nights,"' and it's with someone he trusts, and you go and make it."
"Aladdin was shot in a two-week period," he said. "We didn't venture off it. We were able to stay on the same story in a short time, a tremendous advantage in casting," because it permitted actors to honor other commitments.
The familiar story of Aladdin and his magic lamp provided Mr Barron and the actor John Leguizamo with ample opportunity for mischief.
Each gave credit to the other for improvisational daring, but it was Mr Leguizamo who urged the director to let him play a second part, that of the ring genie, who initially helps Aladdin (Jason Scott Lee) acquire the lamp. In this role Mr Leguizamo, plump in turban and bejeweled robe, is part Pinky Lee, part Teletubby. He whines.
"Who are you?" Aladdin asks.
"Omar Khayyam. Who do you think?" the genie replies petulantly.
As the lamp genie, Mr Leguizamo is bald, bare-chested and covered in tattoos, and he speaks like an electronically enhanced Jesse Ventura. His form, which trails off into smoke, can fill the screen or diminish to human size, a relatively easy trick compared with the computer-generated dragons in "Ali Baba" or the earth-cracking effects at other moments in "Aladdin."
But technology generally takes a back sea to very old stories and storytelling style.
"Everybody asks for money," the genie tells Aladdin when the time has come for him to make a wish. "Why not ask for something new and exciting?"
"How about some kind of flying machine?" Aladdin suggests, inspired.
"Flying machine?" the genie says, spewing sarcasm. "So you could fly all over the world? We could have drinks and someone would serve us peanuts? A flying machine? Maybe we should stick to the money." |||