A mid-1960s Hollywoodized take on the Aladdin’s Lamp legend, the Brass Bottle is probably best known for being the inspiration behind Sidney Sheldon’s long-syndicated popular TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. The female djinn of Jeannie, Barbara Eden, is cast here as the love interest of a frustrated Pasadena architect Harold Ventimore (Tony Randall).
Ventimore happens upon the titular castoff antique bottle that produces not a beautiful female apparition but corpulent folk singer Burl Ives (probably best known as the singing snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Ives plays a jovial turban-wearing 3,000-year-old genie who enters the scene in a purple haze of magic smoke. The genie, of course, has only taken earthly shape so he can grant Harold his every wish. Of course, this isn’t nearly as simple an undertaking as it would seem in the modern world.
It’s quite obvious that this movie was meant to dazzle audiences with what would have been state-of-the-art special effects at the time of its release. The rotund old genie conjures up all kinds of goodies for Harold: elephant parades, camels, gold bullion, belly dancers, and more. But for all its technicolor pomp, the film never feels comfortable with itself as a comedy and isn’t imaginative enough to pass as an eye-popping visually extravagant fantasy.
Tony Randall as Harold just seems to be phoning it in here; however, being Randall, he still manages to eke out a credible performance via sheer professionalism alone. About all one can say of the Brass Bottle is that it was pretty typical light-comedic fare for the times: nothing more, nothing less. And certainly fans of fantasy TV like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched might appreciate a glimpse at the movie (however mediocre) that made such eternally popular sitcoms possible. Not recommended for classic film library collections.