Tom Hank’s everyman charisma can’t save Tom Tyker’s laborious fish out of water romantic drama A Hologram for the King. That the plot doesn’t extent far beyond a man waiting for a meeting – an uphill battle of a dramatic thrust if there ever was one – isn’t necessary narrative nightshade though Tyker’s lackadaisical Tilt-A-Whirl approach to storytelling may just be. With a backbone that lacks pizazz, and often settles on a cursory examination of midlife existential crisis through the lens of cultural alienation, and a directorial style that tends towards unfocused arcs and uneven pacing, Tom Hanks proves a saving grace as a down-on-his-luck moral guide. With Hanks, we are admittedly in good hands but Tyker fails to make the frame swirling around him pop to any degree worth remaking upon.

Tyker’s adaptation Dave Eggers’ 2012 novel begins as a dreamlike music video with Hank’s gliding through the scene to The Talking Head’s 1980 tune “Once in a Lifetime”. As the life Hank’s Alan Clay has assembled goes up in literal smoke around him (his beautiful house, his large automobile, his beautiful wife all disappear in purple plumes) he asks himself, a la David Bryne, how did I get here? Just as the Talking Head’s song questions the solvency of one’s soul, Tyker’s film attempts to accomplish similar feats but to lesser extent at much greater length.

Employing “Once in a Lifetime” as a jumping off point makes sense considering that the film is in no small part a direct adaptation of the song. The magical realism of Tyker’s MTV dreamscape breaks and Alan is on a plane surrounded entirely by Muslims in white thobes. He lands and finds himself in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a la “You may find yourself in another part of the world.” There to meet with the illusive king to pitch state-of-the-art IT technology, Alan and his small team of presenters are treated to a desert tent with no functioning WiFi, access to food or A/C right outside the stately government palace a mere stones throw away. Some may say it’s a “shotgun shack” that he’s found himself in.

Days of politely cancelled meetings, distrustful secretaries and disobliging associates lead Alan’s cool game face to break. He charges into a back room and meets a horny Belgian worked named Hannah (Sidse Babett Knudsen) who adds as much depth of flavor to the film as whipped cream. She’s a stand-in for Alan’s past and past mistakes but acts as little more than a rabbit attempting to hump her way into relevance. Hannah only serves a function as the antithesis to Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), a rare female doctor in the law of Sharia Law, who Alan gloms onto as if by predatory instinct.

Oh yes, and at one point he does finally treat with the associate he’d unsuccessfully been tracking down for days. The man tosses him the keys to his soupy sports car and they zip down an abandoned stretch of desert road thereby finding Alan behind the wheel of a large automobile.

Shotgun shack. Check. Another part of the world. Check. Behind the wheel of a large automobile. Check. Now all Alan needs to do is find himself in a beautiful house filled by a beautiful woman and the story will be complete.

And so it goes.

By the third act, the romantic angle has overtaken the whole waiting around for the king to arrive aspect and opens up into a thing of some delicate beauty. One scene sees Alan and Zahra snorkeling through barrier reefs I personally had no idea existed in the Persian Gulf and it’s actually shot with great care. It’s contemplative and meaningful without being too forceful; it doesn’t overspeak its truth or overstay its welcome. It’s everything the rest of the film needed but sorely lacked. In waiting so long to hone in on the compelling intercultural love story that it seems much more interested in telling anyways, Tyker has applied inhibitors to the emotional and visceral impact of his feature.

Attempts at comic relief, mostly at the hands of Alan’s accidental driver Yousef (Alexander Black), fail to get much of a rise but help A Hologram for the King chug along when its running out of steam – an unfortunately common trend for the film. There’s just not enough juice in the tank to hum confidently from one beat to the next and our attention ends up in the sand trap more times than once. On the other hand, I believe I get what Tyker was going for but it just doesn’t entirely work. Turns out even a perpetually likable star of Tom Hanks’ caliber still isn’t quite powerful enough to make a snoozer of this sort worth recommending.

CONCLUSION: As can be expected, Tom Hanks shines in Tom Tyker’s ‘A Hologram for the King’ but even the great American everyman can’t overcome storytelling this clunky and meandering Middling, sluggish and not up to snuff, this not-quite-heady expat saga fails to capitalize on its greater aspects, preferring to spend an inordinate amount of time oversleeping or waiting around for something to happen.