I Know, It’s Strictly Taboo!: Day #115 - Bewitched (2005)
Viewed April 25, 2006
I don’t know. Maybe I really am just a sucker for Will Ferrell these days, but I enjoyed the heck out of Bewitched. I’m not sure what anyone else was expecting from this film, but I tried to go in with no preconceived notions about it and I just thought it worked.
I read a lot of negative reviews of Bewitched, but I didn’t let that deter me. I had been interested in the film since I had heard the premise, which I thought was a truly original take on the whole “tv-show-to-film” genre. Basically, rather than just re-making Bewitched with new actors, sisters Nora and Delia Ephron present the story of Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), an actor coming off a disastrous year who is trying to revive his career by playing Darren in a new version of Bewitched. He comes across a young woman, Isobel (Nicole Kidman), who he feels is perfect for the role of Samantha. What he doesn’t know is that she actually is a witch. This, plus Jack’s egotistical actions (pushed on him by his manager) is the driving force of the film.
Will Ferrell again shows his ability to generate a multi-dimensional performance. Even at his most arrogant, he allows Jack Wyatt’s basic, decent character to show through. We never really buy that he’s really as bad as people think, just that he’s allowed the image to be projected. Ferrell’s biggest roles in films like Elf, Anchorman and even Old School tend to display similar dual natures and he is proving to be a master at portraying seemingly straightforward (but funny) characters with much more depth inside.
Nicole Kidman gives a very nice performance as Isabel, but I must say, she seems to be channeling Meg Ryan circa-You’ve Got Mail. Maybe it’s Nora Ephron’s direction, but everything from tone of voice to facial expressions to physical gestures seem to be designed to re-create Meg Ryan. Not that that’s a bad thing. Meg Ryan circa-You’ve Got Mail is as engaging and entertaining as romantic comedies get. I just can’t help wonder what Kidman’s performance would have been like if they had deliberately avoided looking like Meg Ryan.
The supporting cast is, for the most part, wonderful. Michael Caine brings his worldly charm to the role of Isabel’s father and Shirley MacLaine is inspired as Iris Smythson, the actress portraying Samatha’s mother Endora. Jason Schwartzman is given very little to do as Jack’s manager, but at least makes his character something more than a cliche. Kristen Chenowith and Heather Burns, as Isabel’s two friends, provide lots of sparkle to their various scenes. The performances are so good that it is unfortunate that the script doesn’t give us any kind of closure for the minor characters. They deserved better.
Less successful are the characters who are re-created from the original show. (This is explained as a side-effect of the whole real-witch-playing-pretend-witch situation.) Carole Shelley does well enough as Aunt Clara, retaining Marion Lorne’s dottiness without actually trying to impersonate her. The same cannot be said for Steve Carell, who tries too hard to re-create Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. The other two, the Kravitzes, only have a brief cameo and are allright.
In fact, it is the direct ties to the TV Show that are the biggest failings in Bewitched. When Jack and Isabel are shooting the new series, they seem to be using the original scripts from the old show. This, in and of itself, is ridiculous, as any new series would have all new scripts. But what is truly astounding is how poorly the whole thing looks. I’ve seen plenty of TV sets and they never look as fake as the ones shown here do. (Not even back when Bewitched was on the air.) Everything from the effects to the camera angles used is out of synch with the way shows look today. I can’t understand why they didn’t make sure that the footage of the series looked like real modern television. With their budget, it should have been easy.
Bewitched is one of those movies that I’m just going to flat out say most critics got wrong. It deserves a great deal of credit for taking the idea of a small-to-big screen adaptation in a new direction and it succeeds on most levels. It’s not a perfect film and it is derivative of previous Ephron productions (particularly Nicole “Meg” Kidman). But, taken as it is, it works more often than it doesn’t, has two appealing leads who play off each other well in a variety of situations and has plenty of good comic material throughout. Bewitched on television was never a groundbreaking, era-defining series. It was a standard sit-com with a hook and succeeded by just trying to entertain. Bewitched on film succeeds for precisely the same reasons.