Daniel the Wizard (2004)
Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2vKfxXE7_4
Oh good lord what is this?
I’ve watched this twice and I still don’t understand what
was supposed to be going on.
Let’s start with the title, Daniel the Wizard. Firstly,
Daniel is not a wizard, he’s a singer. Daniel Küblböck who finished third in
German Idol no less. Which obviously qualified him to be in a movie. I’ve dealt
with Pop Idol people in films before, From
Justin to Kelly, but at least that had some form of structure to it. Daniel The Wizard (or Daniel Der Zauberer in its native
German) is all over the place.
There are some members of the magic circle who want to kill Daniel
because movie. Seriously, I have no idea why they want him dead, maybe because
of his effeminate nature and they really hate that. Or maybe they just didn’t
like his music.
So it’s like if Paul Daniels wanted to take out Chico.
*Pitch Idea: Paul Daniels catches
Chico having ‘Chico-Time’ with Debbie McGee. So Daniels puts a bounty on Chico’s
head and he has to go on the run. David Copperfield and Penn & Teller try
to claim the bounty before Chico, aided only by Rik Waller, confronts Daniels
in a one-on-one final showdown to the death.
I’m filing that one away with Gates
& Young: Vice (see number 30: From
Justin to Kelly). I think people will like it, but not a lot (sorry).
Anyway, back to Daniel the-less-than Wizard. A couple of assassins are
hired to do the job at a concert but they just can’t go through with it, I
guess his songs were just too magical. And then they all end up playing
together in the snow. And I wish to God I was making that up but that actually happens.
There are other tiny, minuscule sub-plots about a teen fan of Daniel’s
and him auditioning for a Hollywood film (with what to me looks like one of the
worst auditions ever but they hire him anyway) but they don’t go anywhere so
they are hardly worth bringing up except to point out that all they do is add
to the chaotic mess of the film.
We do get ‘treated’ to a number of Daniel’s songs and though much like
with Bollywood films I try to stay away from musical criticism, his songs are
bad. Really bad. Watching him singing about being a ‘Rock and Roll hero’ the
only natural response is ‘No. You’re not. You’re really not.’
The soundtrack is mostly Daniel Küblböck’s songs apart from
Tchkaivosky’s Swan Lake. Why that’s there
I have no idea but that always reminds me of Dracula. The best Dracula starring
Bela Lugosi, if you’ve not seen it, go see it. Then watch Lugosi’s other films,
a great actor but typecast in horror films and held back in the Hollywood
studio system by his Hungarian accent.
I appear to keep getting distracted but that’s only because I really don’t
want to think about this film anymore. Even star Küblböck said in
interviews he was so thrilled to have been offered a movie part he never
stopped to think about it making no sense.
It’s 77 minutes long but feels like it goes on for six hours. It’s
revealed at the end one of the wizard’s is Daniel’s father. Or at least I think
it was, I could easily have just been making up my own endings because by that
point, I just really didn’t care.
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