I encourage you to check out the trailer for A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING below if you are interested in watching the film. While sounding fairly awful, that cheesy voiceover and man-reconnecting-with-himself style seems fairly simple, right? Well I had to go watch the trailer after seeing the movie to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I have never read the book, but can only assume Dave Eggers was heading somewhere with many of the characters and plot points that happen. Despite only being an hour and thirty minutes, the film drags, as only about half of what appears on screen is relevant to anything happening in the plot. THE HATEFUL EIGHT feels like a shorter movie than this.
The main plot finds Alan (Tom Hanks) being sent to Saudi Arabia to give a presentation to the king over new technology, but as the king keeps rescheduling and saying he will be late, Tom Hanks must get accustomed to his new life in Saudi Arabia. While living there he ends up meeting a woman he never thought he would connect with, and learning more about himself along the way. At a different point we learn about his once giant bicycle business that he ruined with his decision to outsource. This is supposed to tie in with Alan’s relationship with his daughter, as he in unable to put her through college. And he also has a large romantic involvement with a Danish ambassador that drops off the face of the movie never to be seen again.
I’ve never been a fan of Dave Eggers. I had to read Zeitoun in high school and the book tries to make a point about two great disasters in twenty-first century America: Islamophobia and Hurricane Katrina. In my mind it ended up never making itself clear, clouding the compelling story with a bunch of unnecessary details, and not giving the reader nearly enough details to make up our own minds about what happened other than “FEMA is racist.” The movie feels the same way, sporting way too many unnecessary details and not enough development on the actual main characters.
Tom Hanks does a fine job acting, but his character is fairly bland and prepped for the 90’s style change the movie is about to show his way. The dialogue itself is not very funny, but Hanks still does a great job of being entertaining when he is on screen. Sarita Choudhury is terrific as the main love interest, and it’s great to see a South Asian actress in a leading role as a powerful character. Alexander Black is also relatively funny as Yousef, the best friend and guide character… once you can remind yourself that he is supposed to be Saudi.
I don’t want to talk about race too much, as it is very political for a movie reviewing website. It’s just so strange that a white actor was cast for the role, where nearly every other Saudi was played by a Saudi. I am normally not this vocal on these types of issues in movies. I am not bothered by THE MARTIAN as none of the characters’ races were changed where their race was an important part of their character (plus they tried to get Irfan Khan for the role and he had to bail last minute). Then there is the case of ALOHA where it is a large part of the character, but money becomes an issue. The biggest factor people judge comedies on are the cast, so as many big names as possible are needed. It is a little irksome, but something that will hopefully change with time as demographics change and there are more famous actors of all races. Then there are situations like this where a character is portrayed by a white man despite race being a large part of the role and fame not being an issue. This film is literally Alexander Black’s only IMDB credit. Dave Eggers, the man who wrote Zeitoun, is the farthest thing from prejudiced. The casting directors who hired a powerful South Asian female are far from racists. So why? What is the point of casting a white man? If black face would immediately cause boycotts in a film, why is brown face still acceptable? And by the way, at least make the make up believable. From the first scene I kept expecting him to say something about him being one of the few white people in Saudi Arabia before I realized what was going on. But back to the film, too much goes on for it to succeed at anything, while never really settling on what it wants to accomplish.
