Genies are back on the silver screen, and Bill Ervolino is pondering his wishes

Thanks to a new movie, one of life’s eternal questions is making the rounds again: If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be?

Silly question?

Maybe not.

In polls, when the question is posed to adults, the three most common answers are health, wealth and happiness.

After all, what else is there?

Apparently, though, there are lots of other things that people wish for, depending on who those people are.

The Founding Fathers longed for a more perfect union. Tom Hanks wanted desperately to be “Big.” And so many beauty pageant contestants have hungered for world peace that you have to wonder why, all these years later, people are still fighting.

Aren’t we supposed to listen to beautiful people?

Don’t they know more than the rest of us?

(Incidentally, another popular wish, according to polls: Being beautiful.)

On the website TheTopTens.com, when the question of wishes was posed to children, “unlimited money” was one of the more popular answers. But there was no mention of health, happiness or peace.

Rather, kids said they wanted mind-reading powers, the ability to talk to snakes, the chance to have candy whenever they wanted it and, of course, no homework.

They also wanted Hogwarts — Harry Potter’s creepy school — to be a real place. And they wanted to go wherever they please and wear whatever they please without any interference from their parents.

Yeah? Good luck with that one.

Two years ago, when I was 65 and my father was 94, he was still criticizing my taste in shirts, sweaters and shoes.

(He died last year. And, every so often, I find myself wishing he were still around, if only to tell me how ugly my socks are and how chunky I look in khakis.)

According to self-help gurus, making our wishes, hopes and dreams come true isn’t all that difficult, assuming we stay focused, set short-term goals, work hard and…

Blah, blah, blah.

You’ll notice that motivational types never mention magic — which is my favorite way of getting things done — or magical people, who do it for you.

Which brings me to Richard Eyer, an early childhood idol. Eyer turned 77 this year, and he was my first you-know-what — even before Barbara Eden.

In 1958, the actor — who was then 13 years old — had a co-starring role in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,” playing Barani, the genie.

I saw the film four years after it was first released, when I was 7 years old. And I spent the next two years wandering around the house wearing my pajama bottoms as a turban, saying “I am Barani” and asking my relatives what their wishes were.

My father said he wished I would run away from home. He also noted, “That turban looks terrible on you.”

Other famous screen genies of yore include Rex Ingram in “The Thief of Bagdad,” Burl Ives in the 1964 version of “The Brass Bottle” — which co-starred future genie Barbara Eden — and Robin Williams in Disney’s animated musical film “Aladdin.”

Djinn, the genie currently gracing movie screens, is played by Idris Elba, in George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.”

In the film, Djinn enters the life of a lonely scholar named Althea, played by Tilda Swinton.

What she wishes for may surprise you.

(And it’s not the ability to talk to snakes.)

Some psychologists, especially those who work with children, have dismissed books and movies that feature genies and other similar plot devices, because they encourage us to wish, often hopelessly, for things we don’t have.

(Duh. What else would we wish for?)

In 1900, my old friend Sigmund Freud coined the phrase “wish fulfillment” in his book “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

Actually, he called it “wunscherfüllung,” but I said, “Siggy, why don’t you call it ‘wish fulfillment,’ instead?” And he said, “You’re so much smarter than me!” And I said, “You mean, ‘so much smarter than I.’”

And so on and so forth.

Dreams that include wish fulfillment, Freud believed, were a response to the repression imposed on people by society. And, he insisted, such dreams were attempts by the unconscious mind to resolve the conflicts brought on by this repression.

What psychologists have often failed to take into consideration — something that the heroine of the new film does not — is that many of these “three wishes” tales have nasty twists.

One of the best, the short story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs, is actually a classic horror tale. Its morals are “don’t tempt fate” and “be careful what you wish for.”

These twists remind us that we should work hard, earn everything we covet and accept the disappointment that goes with craving things we will likely never have.

With that in mind, who on earth would want a genie in the house granting their every wish?

Well, OK, I would.

But… anyone else?

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Three thousand years of longing might be just enough for Bill Ervolino