just a little...bewitched

Bewitched: a Movie Review

Remember Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail? She was the naive, genuine-hearted bookstore owner who fought the corporate devils and lost, dissolving into a puddle of disillusionment before emerging stronger and rather forgiving of the (as it turned out, not such a) bastard who put her out of business. She looked at the world with a kind of innocent wonder and shook her head from side to side in confusion over the ways of the world (like Meg does in, oooh, pretty much every movie she’s in).

That's pretty much how Nicole Kidman plays Isabel: never quite clued-up on the real world, not getting why anyone would lie or be mean, and shaking her head in a cute, naive way every time something confused her. In contrast, the first thing we see her do is manipulate the world five times in a row to be the way she wants it. Whose was that house she conveniently planted a ‘for rent’ sign on? Did she even know?

But I digress…

The movie was okay. It was funny, occasionally hilarious (eg, the scene where Jack is hexed). The characters were pretty two-dimensional, but I wasn’t expecting any different. Nicole was sweet. I do wish she’d gotten a little more…’witchy’ at times. The movie could have used a little more of the black humour provided in small doses by a few of the supporting characters. Will Ferrell performed way above my expectations, which were not very high. The movie as a whole though, just never quite seemed to go as far as it could’ve. But hey, it made me laugh. If someone asked me to watch it again, I wouldn’t cringe. So 3 stars. One for Nicole; one for the studio assistant (who coincidentally worked in Meg Ryan’s bookstore in You’ve Got Mail); and one for the afore-mentioned hex scene.

Gotta feel sorry for the blonde who’s one line in the movie was, “Hi, I’ve got hepatitis C”, a line that, by the way, the movie makers are now catching some heat over. Reminds me of the Friends episode where Joey does some photos, only to discover they are being used for a VD ad.