Bewitched

Bewitched – Isabel is a witch who one day decides to live a ‘normal’ life without magic. Meanwhile, arrogant has-been star, Jack Wyatt, is trying to find the perfect Samantha for his remake of the popular sitcom, Bewitched, and discovers her in Isabel. When Isabel realises she is being used as little more than a pretty extra in the show, her vow to stay away from witchcraft is broken when she seeks revenge. Regretting her actions, can she change Jack without magic and be the star she was promised to be?

Bewitched (2005) – Director: Nora Ephron

Rating: PG

Running Length: 102 mins

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Michael Caine

Genre: Comedy

REVIEW: ‘BEWITCHED’

Beloved sitcom ‘Bewitched’ follows witch, Samantha, trying to live a normal family life with her loving ‘normal’ husband Darrin. ‘Bewitched’ the movie is about a narcissistic actor, Jack Wyatt, wanting to remake the sitcom which he loved in his youth and real-life Samantha-like witch, Isabel who tries to live a ‘normal’ life but immediately gets cast as the lead in Jack’s show.

No-one expects ‘Bewitched’ to change the world but something with a little bit of substance would have been nice. Nicole Kidman’s ‘Isabel’ is delightfully sweet and innocent, however her character is the only good thing about the movie. The plot is flimsy, the jokes are poor and the other characters are at best, bland and at worst, thoroughly dislikeable and Will Ferrell does nothing to persuade the audience his character is worth a moment of Isabel’s time. His blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turn around is so unconvincing that Isabel’s change of heart towards him makes her appear stupid and weak.

With so much sexual innuendo and generally adult themes but with a silly premise that adults are unlikely to be interested in, it is difficult to know exactly who this movie is aimed at. One thing is for sure, very few people, except perhaps for die-hard Will Ferrell fans, are actually going to see ‘Bewitched’ as anything but a superficial, self-indulgent mess.

CONTENT: IS ‘BEWITCHED’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

Much of the magic revolves around mind control and making people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Including references to women having spells put on them to sleep with a male character.

Isabel’s father seems to be an unashamed serial philanderer which Isabel accepts, even with regards to her mother. She tells him ‘Even when you and mother ere married you were always casting spells on other women. It’s total instant gratification for you, daddy’ to which he replies ‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’

A man goes on a rant for around 2 minutes and uses a moderate expletive repeatedly.

Several books are seen on a shelf relating to divorce. One of the titles is ‘How my wife slept with a pro-basketball player and I learned to love it!’

A male character objectifies Isabel saying ‘She does have a good little back-end on her, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed!’

When Isabel learns that Jack has been using her, she and to friends discuss the revenge they want to take. One says ‘We could electrocute him, there are tons of wires hanging around’. Another character says ‘When my first husband left me I wanted to cut the brake cables in his car but instead we ended up having sex on the elliptical machine’

Later, when continuing to discuss revenge, a character says ‘If we get naked pictures of him and pictures of farm animals, I can just photoshop them’.

A spell is put on Jack in order to make him love Isabel. This quickly gets out of hand and he becomes obsessed with her. When he asks her out on a date, she says ‘No’ to which he immediately replies, ‘Yes! That’s a yes!’.

Jack takes Isabel on a date while under the influence of the spell and at the end of it he says ‘Let’s make love in a hot air balloon! Let’s make love in a candy factory! Let’s make love in a petting zoo! Let’s make love at SeaWorld on the back of a killer whale!’

Jack goes on a rant about test audiences that didn’t rate him high enough. He angrily asks if the were ‘high’ on ‘crack cocaine’.

Jack’s ex-wife speaks to Isabel saying ‘The Do Not Disturb sign will be on the doorknob tonight!’. This makes Isabel angry and she magically makes a large heavy item fall on the woman, crushing her. She realises this was too strong so she reverses time and instead takes her revenge in a much milder way.

Isabel’s father flirts with a waitress around 50 years his junior. The young woman has a spell placed on her by another witch so she turns to him a enthusiastically says ‘Yes, I will sleep with you!’ She then goes on to seem unappealing to the man so he simply walks away. The same thing happens with a different waitress later in the movie, this time the woman says ‘Hey there, I have hepatitis C!’

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘BEWITCHED’ FOR KIDS?

Seemingly unable to work out if it is a movie for younger or older audience, ‘Bewitched’ swings wildly between both and satisfies neither. There is fun to be had in seeing Nicole Kidman play against type, and most scenes are quirky, throw away affairs so in that sense ‘Bewitched’ is suitable for children aged 8 and up, but that depends on your thoughts towards the innuendo and unlikability of the other characters that the movie is trying to convince us to laugh with!

• Violence: 1/5 (some threats of violence when Isabel and others are discussing taking revenge on Jack)
• Emotional Distress: 0/5
• Fear Factor: 0/5
• Sexual Content: 4/5 (frequent innuendo. A man is proud of his adulterous ways)
• Bad Language: 3/5 (Isabel is very naïve and when answering the phone to one of her friends, asks ‘what’s a dick?’ Later, the same phone call happens and she says ‘he’s a giant male reproductive organ!’. One conversation includes constant moderate cursing. Some blasphemy)
• Dialogue: 3/5 (innuendo, discussions about taking violent revenge on a male character
• Other Notes: Deals with themes of mind control, shallow behaviour, divorce, womanising, pandering to mass appeal, being manipulated, and magic.

Words by Laura Record

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