Three Thousand Years of Longing has a lot of interesting and fascinating ideas but it really isn’t about those ideas. Instead, it’s more about a handful of short stories circulating about a relationship that isn’t half as interesting as those interesting ideas.

The flick stars Tilda Swinton as an lecturer on human storytelling and mythology who stumbles on, and releases, an ancient djinn, played by Idris Elba. She’s onto him and his sorcerer’s ways so she doesn’t want to use his monkey paw wishes. Instead, he tells her stories about three past times he intervened in the lives of mortals.

This film dances around – but never fully commits – to some really cool ideas. I wanted to watch the movie about storytelling and how the ancient myths transformed into superheroes. Or how an actual ancient mythological creature would relate to our modern world. Those ideas are in this flick as window dressing for a relationship or romance that isn’t half as interesting as they think it is.

The three short stories, while visually arresting, are only decent and seem like a bunch of time filler for whatever the actual movie is about. It’s not that they’re bad, but they just don’t feel critical and I’m not sure they make their point very well.

Also not so sure I bought the relationship between Swinton and Elba… which is kind of a big problem.

I’m afraid the window dressing of the film was far more appealing to me than the film they made. It’s not a bad flick and it certainly looks great and is acted well, I just didn’t feel the core heart-rending reaction I think I was supposed to feel.

Score: 74