What Would Samantha Do? She'd Demand a Rewrite.

Boy: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Endora: Comme ci, comme ca.
From the series, Bewitched (1964)

Now that the Bewitched "remake" (it's not really a remake, but a movie about a remake) has popped into reality, we ask, Is it a good movie or a bad movie? Comme ci, comme ca. It could have been worse; but it could have been better.

There are a lot of ideas in this movie. Not all of them were worth keeping.

Let's start with the good: Using the premise of a story about a remake, instead of a remake, was a good idea. Not only does this get the moviemakers off the hook about tampering with a beloved series, it gives them room to make jokes that reference the original. Most of them, if you haven't seen the original, are still funny. If you have, they're better.

(When the first tests come back from the pilot and Jack's comments are bad, the significance of his choice for comeback vehicle is driven home: "I'm Darrin! They *recast* Darrin, and nobody noticed!" Exactly. Even when you don't build the show around the witch, the witch is the star of the show -- see Fields' rule regarding children and dogs.)

They're also smart enough to show clips from the old series, ostensibly as our heroine's crash course in all things Bewitched, which gives the tie-ins a bit more resonance. When Isabel tells herself, "I won't... I won't... maybe I will," about zapping Jack's soon-to-be ex, she's echoing Samantha's inner struggle from the pilot, which we've seen for ourselves. And of course, they both give in. Because that's the point.

Some of the lifts from the original don't work so well. Samantha's parents, although arguably television's first separated couple, were both strong presences in her life. Isabel only has her dad, warlock Nigel (Michael Caine); her mother has "disappeared." The only reason for this seems to be so that womanizing Nigel can become smitten (maybe magically so?) by Iris Smythson (Shirley Maclaine), the grand dame of the stage hired to portray Endora. I was looking forward to seeing Maclaine take a stab at everyone's favorite mother-in-law, but this was another disappointment; she's not Endora, or Agnes Moorehead, or even Shirley Maclaine. I think she's playing Aurora Greenway in peacock green.

Another misfire is the appearance of Isabel's Aunt Clara, who looks and sounds and bumps into things just like Samantha's Aunt Clara. She even collects doorknobs, just like Aunt Clara. Sounds like a great idea, right? It may seem that way, but this segment could (and should) have played without the weird Aunt Clara reference tucked in; while Carole Shelley does a delightful homage to the great Marion Lorne (who really did collect doorknobs, which is why it was written into the show), there's really no reason for this Clara to be here except to make sure we know that the Ephron sisters know who Aunt Clara was.

On the other hand, when Uncle Arthur shows up (about ten minutes too late if you ask me), the reasons for his being there make perfect sense. It's also one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

I haven't said much about either Nicole Kidman or Will Ferrell; that's because there's not a whole lot to say. She's very cute and endearing in the beginning, when she wants only to live a normal life and argue with someone about paint; he's goofy edging into obnoxious (and only occasionally over the other way towards charming) as a fallen movie star who still has enough clout to have people putting up with his nonsense. At one point, Isabel tells him he seems "troubled," which is part of the attraction for her; this man is too shallow to be troubled. Iris puts it to her thus: "My dear, sometimes deep down, there is no deep down." This is not a man someone gives up witchcraft for. This is a mortal who the audience would be happy to see turned into a bullfrog (or a jackass, or a horse or a chimp) and then never recast.

Will Ferrell is, to my mind, an acquired taste. He's obnoxious, then he does something that makes me laugh anyway, and then he keeps going and it's too far. Thus it is with Jack Wyatt -- he's got to have people like his disgusting manager Ritchie around just to make him look more human by comparison.

[Random interjection: Since when did the p-word become part of the PG-13 lexicon? Did I miss something? When a man calls another man that upwards of 10 times in as many seconds in a movie being billed as "family entertainment," I have to admit I'm actually shocked.]

It's hard to believe that Isabel falls in love with this Goofus (remember, Darrin didn't start out looking like an idiot; it was prolonged exposure to witches and warlocks and spells and Macedonian dodo birds and increasingly bad writing that made him that way). If all she wanted was to fall in love with a mortal because they get sweaty, she probably could have found someone who doesn't sing the name game song with his own name.

When I like Isabel the best is when she discovers that she is being used -- Jack begged her to join the show because he needed her, but he really just wanted her nose (which is very twitch-i-licious, I must say). The new show is all about Darrin, and she's just there to make him look good. Once she learns this, she considers her options while looking at a snap of Elizabeth Montgomery tucked in her mirror's edge. "What would Samantha do?" Isabel wonders. With a little inspiration from Our Favorite Witch, Isabel starts laying down the intergalactic smack.

If only she'd been that way for the rest of the movie; it might have been over sooner, but that might not have been a bad thing. One thing the series and the movie unfortunately have in common is this: Both should have ended sooner than they did. Even the best magic only lasts so long before it starts to wear off.

Posted on June 27, 2005 to horticulture

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