You could see it coming just by watching the trailers. Bewitched was going to go from a hilarious comedy to a disastrous romance and it is right smack dab in the middle where it all falls apart.
Instead of calling this a remake it is being described as a “re-imagining” of the classic TV series “Bewitched.” A story of an average, everyday man who marries a witch who is trying to stifle her witchy ways and, ironically, that is exactly what we have here… TWICE.
Will Ferrell plays Jack Wyatt, an actor whose movie career didn’t exactly go as planned and to reinvigorate his career he decides to take the role of Darrin in Hollywood’s attempt to remake “Bewitched” the TV series. Among other demands, the only real stipulation Jack has is he gets to cast Samantha, and it has to be an unknown… cue Isabel Bigelow (Kidman).
Isabel is, get this, a real witch who is, get this again, trying to quit being a witch, and when Jack sees her in town he knows she is the one as she seems to be the only one with the uncanny ability to wiggle her nose in that trademark Samantha way, on top of that she seems to really know the character.
Everything I just described is fine. A good mix of humor and story had me laughing out loud. I was digging the story and ready for more, then something happened. Jack and Isabel fell in love and the movie fell apart. The humor was abandoned and the script got sloppy. Meaningless musical montages and worthless scenes came to the forefront and instead of an interesting and funny romantic comedy it became disjointed and pointless. This is truly unfortunate, there was something good brewing.
Surprisingly Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell worked well together, and while Will was as funny as ever he suddenly seems to be running out of things to make me laugh. Everything seems to be old hat, and while I still get the chuckles, they are fading fast.
One piece of storyline that really came out of nowhere is a part played by Steve Carell (Bruce Almighty, NBC’s “The Office”). I won’t giveaway what part he plays, but let’s just say it is so bad it feels as if the filmmakers really were begging for about five extra minutes of film and just tossed his scenes together in seconds.
Bewitched is a rental at best, and more and more often it is beginning to seem like many of these movies are being made strictly for store shelves as this one begins to have “couch potato” written all over it. I certainly wish I hadn’t made the trek to the theater to see it.
