Posted: 06/23/2005

Bewitched

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

Note to Hollywood: Stop making TV shows for the big screen!

Movie ticket prices are up. Concession prices are ridiculous. More ads are showing up before the Warnings (trailers). Movie attendance is down. It doesn’t take my Economics degree to figure out why more people would rather rent a DVD than go to the theaters.

Or is it that Hollywood is running out of ideas. This week we have a brand new movie opening: Bewitched! Sounds familiar though. Wasn’t that the 1960’s sitcom with Elizabeth Montgomery where she plays a witch that falls in love with a mortal and hilarity ensues as they interact with other witches and mortals? Yes, you tell yourself, that’s the one. But that show was funny enough, why don’t I just stay home and watch reruns on TV Land instead of paying $20 plus popcorn and parking.

And there you have it. And with Bewitched, YES YOU SHOULD. I saw this movie so you don’t have to. Or—at least, go ahead and wait for the $1.99 rental so you can curl up and watch the new Samantha (Nicole Kidman) wiggle her nose with that cute sound effect.

Bewitched isn’t an extra long version of the sitcom, it’s spoofing what Hollywood is doing to itself in trying to find new plots and complications from old stories. Will Ferrell is Jack Wyatt, a burned out A-hole of an B-actor who is given the opportunity to star as Darren in a remaking of the popular sitcom. In order to make himself the most important person in the cast, he insists on searching for an unknown to play Samantha. Intersecting with that story line enter Kidman (To Die For, Cold Mountain, Moulin Rouge) as Isabel Bigelow, a witch who wants out of the magic world. Their paths cross (or there wouldn’t be a story) and in the twitch of a nose, Jack has convinced Isabel to be his TV wife.

Ferrell is perfect as the A-hole Wyatt. Not that his acting is any good, but his Way-Too-Over-The-Top-To-Be-Funny style (see Kicking and Screaming, Elf, Old School ad nauseum) fits. There are a couple of bright acting moments though. Jennifer Hall (Legally Blonde, TV) plays a waitress in one scene and is perfect. Kristin Chen (currently playing feisty Annabeth Schott in The West Wing) as the Isabel’s neighbor is just perfect. She has 7 more films coming up, and deservedly so.

There are lots of cute gags that focus on witchcraft and that flashback to the series, but it is SO not worth it to get out of your Lazy Boy recliner, put on your shoes and drive down to the multiplex. If you can blink yourself there, OK, but while you are doing it, blink yourself up some $5 popcorn and $4.50 large Diet Coke. Lowering prices for going to the movies. THAT would be the real magic.

Hank Yuloff is a film critic and entrepreneur in La-La Land.

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