Bewitched (2005, UMD)

I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Bewitched in its entirety before. If that makes anything I have to say a moot point, so be it. But I'm in the wrong age bracket, that's for sure.

Being born in 1976 basically means you haven't the capacity to splorch yourself over anything black and white, but you're pretty well too old for today's wretched humor. So you're caught in the middle. That's kind of what I'm left feeling about Bewitched, the movie. There were some things I absolutely loved about it, and others that left me smothered by apathy and ambivalence.

As is made fairly obvious by the trailers, Bewitched is not a direct remake of the original (for what little such a thing would be doable) but more of a movie about a bunch of actors and writers attempting to bring the old series back to life with a few new twists. It's like that whole "movie within a movie" concept as seen on other such sputterers as Adaptation.

Speaking of Adaptation, Robert McKee shouts one of my favorite screenwriting-related nuggets of advice there -- "You cannot have a protagonist without desire! It doesn't make any sense!" Ohhh, this is not good. Guess what, y'all. We have a protagonist without desire.

That would be Isabel Bigalow (Nicole Kidman). Okay, at first she does have a desire. She is a witch who can have anything she wants with a wiggle of the nose, snap of the fingers, tug of the earlobe. But she wants to give it up and just live a "normal" life. That is her desire. The only problem is (and Nicolas Cage will tell you) this once straight and narrow shot becomes a gutter ball because there is no real follow-through.

So all of a sudden one day, she finds herself in the studio with Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) who plays the role of Darren in the TV show, and he wants her to be Samantha. Being a real witch, Isabel has no problem convincing the boys at the studio that she can play one. Well, no sooner is she part of the big new thing than does Jack start hogging the camera (although really, it looks as much like the cameras are hogging him) and stealing all Isabel's thunder.

Lest we forget, this gal is practically immortal. All it takes are a few facial gestures and she can spin the whole thing around. And if she isn't happy with the result of something, no problem, just hit the rewind button. Not even kidding.

I wasn't sure exactly what to hope for most of the time. Hope for Isabel to get back to a normal life? Hope for her and Jack to fall in love? Hope for the TV show to be a success? Hope for him to accept her when he finds out what she really is?

The last half-hour, possibly even 20 minutes (my bio-clock's got arthritis so I'm not sure) just go by in this one big WHOOSH! It takes too long for Jack to find out that Isabel is a real witch, and what remains is the typical post-breakup pre-makeup hoo-hah. You have the scenes of each of them alone in bed or drinking or smoking or talking to friends who say "Move on" and "Give it up", and then of course you have the contrived reunion. The only thing missing was a shot of her in the back seat of a taxi, and Jack visibly chasing out the back window.

I'll say this much for Bewitched, though, the performances were really good. I was never much of a Nicole Kidman fan before; in fact, seeing her in the red dress looking at the camera and doing that nose thing actually literally made me nauseous once. She's just always been the kind to play serious roles (as in The Others, The Interpreter, The Hours, etc.) and the thought of her going into a lighthearted comedic role, I figured the lens would be cracking. As it turns out, she is pretty damn cute here. Reminded me of Meg Ryan. I almost forgot who I was watching in certain moments like when she crossed her eyes. It's so not her, and yet I loved it. Still, I don't know about that whole wardrobe thing. Try as I may, I just can't see how dress shirts with tails hanging out under sweaters looks good in any way.

This is the first Will Ferrell movie I've ever seen, so although the general gist of his style is obvious from the countless trailers he's been in recently, expectations remained nebulous. I figured he was goin' to be over the top, and that he most definitely was. The guy is so violently uncontrollable, even to himself, and sometimes that right there was what made him funny. I'm not saying he was always funny, but he brought it out of me a few times. His imitation of a teenage girl going "Air, my God" (go ahead, say it out loud!) is pretty good.

Shirley MacLaine plays Iris, who in turn plays Endora in the TV show. She doesn't get a whole lot of time, much less anything terribly interesting to do besides come and go in a poof and get involved in a hackneyed love subplot with Nigel Bigalow (Michael Caine). Caine seems to be his usual assured and assuring self, for what little I've seen of him.

At some point, Jack and Isabel watch some of the old episodes of Bewitched to get a feel for what they're doing with the show. So you do get to see some clips from the original Bewitched, which are actually some of the funniest parts of the movie. Something about watching a person laugh at something that's funny, makes it 10 times funnier. I don't think the cartoon that Jim Carrey watches at the beginning of The Mask is all that funny, but when he starts laughing at it, I go ballistic. Well, apparently I'm not the only one who finds myself interested now in seeing a few Bewitched re-runs for myself.

I've enjoyed the work of director/writer Nora Ephron in the past. We're talking When Harry Met Sally, Michael and Sleepless In Seattle here, although it still befuddles me that in the latter, they had to spend three minutes spoiling the end of An Affair To Remember, but I digress. With Bewitched, it seems like there is just too much going on at once. Mayhap the attempt was to make it feel like three or four episodes of a television show smushed together. But indeed, smush is the end result.

Someone pointed out that 20 years from now, they could do this very same thing to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Damn if that didn't make me realize how the boomers must feel about this!