FanUnity B(uzz)log

Well before I rented "Bewitched" on DVD, before the movie hit theaters, one thing was obvious from the trailer.  "Bewitched" was trying to be very clever about the way it remade the popular TV series of yore.  It wasn't going to be a straight remake.  It was going to be a film ABOUT making a remake.

At my college graduation the commencement speaker was someone I'd never heard of before.  Honestly, I couldn't tell you who he was, or in what way he was qualified to give a commencement speech, but there he was, and there I was.  As the speaker began speaking, it became clear that he was in fact not qualified to be giving this speech.  He used a classic cop-out.  He made the subject of his speech the process by which he came to be asked to write the speech and then the process of going "Shit, what am I going to write."  The commencement speech sucked, just like "Bewitched" sucked.

The casting of Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman seemed to guarantee a certain level of quality for "Bewitched."  Director Nora Ephron probably guarantees a certain level of quality in the eyes of chick-flick fans too.  And yet, "Bewitched" is an impotent comedy.  Will Ferrell only manages to be funny in scenes where he gets to infuse his normal "Will Ferrell schtick."  Nicole Kidman is cute, but that isn't very fulfilling because Nicole Kidman is capable of so much more than cute.  All she really does in "Bewitched" is act super-cute and super-nice.  Michael Caine is pretty good in the film as Kidman's warlock dad, an aging lothario who works his magical mojo on Shirley McLane and a chick half his age.

The lesson of "Bewitched" is that it isn't clever or creative to tell the story about how you were going to write [fill in whatever you were supposed to write here], rather then actually writing a real [fill in whatever you were supposed to write here].

Still, it's not like the world has been deprived of some great masterpiece that should have been the "Bewitched" movie or anything.

1.5/5 Stars.