Joining the James Bond series and others in the just-plain-fun subcategory of escapist entertainment, The Adventures of Hajji Baba is such an airy confection it might have been a half-remembered daydream, but for the file sitting on my hard drive giving proof to its existence. Loosely based on an ostensibly satirical novel by British diplomat James Justinian Morier (never read it; never will either), Adventures stars John Derek as a barber in Qajar Persia who himself daydreams of excitement, travel and romance.
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| Noone this good-looking or heterosexual literally exists anymore. It's like looking at a perfectly-preserved mammoth or some shit. |
For blah-blah reasons, haughty hottie Princess Fawzia (Elaine Stewart) disguises herself extremely unconvincingly as a boy to sneak her way out of the palace at Ispahan to meet with Nur-El-Din, a prince who seeks her hand in marriage but (spoilers that will surprise no one) turns out to be a heel. Hajji the barber finds himself her escort through the perils of the desert, including the pursuit of her father's cool-looking but sadly useless guards and the Amazonesque Turcoman women, harem escapees who raid caravans and capture men for snu snu.
Adventures might as well be a checklist of clichés, from the feisty princess/charming rogue romance at its core to the black-clad villain, femme fatale dancing girl and aforementioned Amazons, but like a blues scale there are many variations to be mined from such staple ingredients, and like a mixed metaphor it's impressing no one but you get the point. What instead elevates Adventures is its dreamy stylisation, all colour-coded old-Hollywood orientalism and strikingly weird California landscapes that could as well be antique Persia or the Moon.
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| They clearly dyed the water an impossible shade of blue just to heighten the aesthetic exoticism of the mise-en-scène. |
Given how cinematic the scenery right next door to the main hub of U.S. film production is, it's mind-blowing how underused it all is in favour of CGI greenscreens of featureless rooms and ugly, muddy purplish "alien worlds" that take more Koreans than will exist in 50 years thousands of hours to render just to look like ugly CGI slop anyway. RETVRN!!!
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| ♪We could've had it aaa-aaall... |
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