The Bizarre Truth About The 1990s Shazaam Movie That Never Was
Have you ever reminisced with your best buds about when you were kids and everything was awesome? We certainly have. But what if you brought up a memory of something that made your heart sing with the joys of childhood – yet your buddy had no recollection of it whatsoever? This is just what happened to fans of Shazaam, an enigma of a movie from the 1990s. And it’s a very strange tale, guys.
If you were a kid back then, chances are you remember the work of one David Adkins, also known as “Sinbad.” He was a comedian who starred in several fondly remembered family movies around that time, including First Kid, Jingle All The Way and Good Burger. Sinbad was an expert at delivering that wholesome slapstick we all love at a certain age.
In another one of his efforts, Sinbad played a silly genie. The movie was called Shazaam and the plot went like this: two kids find a lamp in their attic and accidentally release a genie. They wish for their estranged mother to return to the family, but the genie can’t simply grant that particular wish. Genie rules, you see.
So as the kids struggle to find a way to make their wish come true, hilarity ensues. Their dad accidentally brings the lamp, and the genie, to work with him and he causes havoc. But no one can see the genie, right? They think it’s the dad trashing the workplace! It all sounds like prime 1990s’ fare, but there is one weird thing about the movie. Only a select group of people remember it ever existing.
Because in a crazy twist of fate, it seems this Sinbad movie has been lost to the sands of time. Yet most of the people who insist they’ve seen it have recollections of the plot, ranging from the non-specific to the positively forensic. A 25-year-old Nashville woman named Meredith told New Statesman in 2016 what she had in her memory bank.
