Review of A Hologram for the King (2016) by Patrick L — 17 Aug 2016

"This middle-eastern fish-out-of-water story is all over the place in trying to squeeze laughs, drama and insight at the same time".

Movie Review: A Hologram for the King.

Date Viewed: April 27 2016.

Directed By Tom Tykwer (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas and The International).

Screenplay By Tom Tykwer, Based on the novel by Dave Eggers.

Starring: Tom Hanks, Alexander Black, Sarita.

Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Tracey Fairaway, Tom Skerritt, Ben Whishaw, David Menken, Khalid Laith, Rolf Saxon and Jay Abdo.

"A Hologram for the King" is one of those feel-good movies that feels lost in the desert. Based on the 2012 novel by Dave Eggers, it stars Tom Hanks as a washed-up businessman who travels to Saudi Arabia to sell holographic technology to the Saudi king.

This middle eastern fish-out-of-water story is all over the place in trying to squeeze laughs, drama and insight at the same time. This whole movie feels pushed together by executives who were trying to make this adaptation nice and sweet as possible.

After getting divorced from his wife and losing his house, washed-up American businessman, Alan Clay (Hanks) travels to Saudi Arabia where he hopes to please the Saudi king by selling a holographic teleconferencing system to his government but he is faced with a few problems, his team doesn't have the equipment to set it up or Wi-Fi. Making matters more complicated, the Saudi king keeps pulling out of Alan's appointments.

Alan's life is in shambles right now, he just had an ugly divorce with his wife, he lost his house during the recession and he is unable to pay for his daughter's college tuition. On the bright side, Clay befriends his fellow Saudi cab driver, Yousef (Alexander Black) and he starts a blooming romance with a female Saudi doctor, Zahra (Sarita Choudhury) who helps Clay in treating the growth on his back. The movie also stars Tom Skerritt as Clay's father who is sick of his son outsourcing American jobs to overseas countries.

Since the filmmakers weren't able to shoot in Saudi Arabia, they went to film in Morocco instead. The cinematography by Frank Griebe is beautiful to look at and Sarita Choudhury's performance is really good but "A Hologram for the King" is a bland and flappy movie that has nothing interesting to say about middle eastern culture. Writer and director Tom Tykwer (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Run Lola Run, The International and Cloud Atlas) adds little flair to Dave Eggers' story and this movie was a strange and moody pick for Tom Hanks who also served as a producer.

The film's messages seem half-baked and the whole product is not worth buying.