What Hollywood probably doesn’t need right now is too many hokey, Western-centric culture-clash dramedies in the spirit of Eat Pray Love or Hector And The Search For Happiness. Happily, A Hologram For The King looks like having a more authentic tenor to it. As its new trailer reveals, it’s also got Tom Hanks singing Talking Heads in gonzoid dream sequences. Promising stuff, if you ask us.
Hanks plays Alan Clay, a man on the prowl for new opportunities after things in his hometown of Boston go south for him. Setting out across physical and metaphorical horizons, he lands in Saudi Arabia looks to peddle a new-fangled 3D conferencing system to the royal family.
On Arabian soil, he’s befriended by a zany local driver – uh-oh, cliché alert! - who turns out to be more complex and nuanced than it initially appears – phew! - as the pair bond over Chicago (the band) and their common humanity.
Praying and eating may be thin on the ground in the trailer but there’s definitely the whispers of love as Hank’s salesman suffers a panic attack and is soothed by a Saudi woman (Sarita Choudhury). “Sometimes,” waxes voiceover man, "you have to change your scenery to change your life”. Alexander Black, Tom Skerritt and Ben Whishaw are all in attendance to help with that process.
Adapted from Dave Eggers’s 2012 novel and directed by Perfume’s Tom Tykwer, A Hologram For The King gets its UK release on May 20.