Against my better judgement, akin to the time I tried to stop a moving fan with my penis, and just as painful, I took in a viewing of the horrendous Bewitched starring America's new favorite sweetheart Will Ferrell.
Never a huge fan of the Elizabeth Montgomery driven original series I don't know why I expected this to be any better. Not liking the source material may seem blasphemous but I never found it funny.
I thought this movie would be in the same vein as one of my all time favorite mvies, The Brady Bunch. I was under the impression that it would make fun of the original series and therefore I was all for it. Well not only did this comedy not make fun of the original series, it was so self referential, it knew it was a big screen remake of a old sitcom and milked it for all it was worth. Making passing references to the original, setting the movie in the real world where the actors in the film were actors making a small screen remake.
Nicole Kidman was the polar opposite of TV's Samantha. Where Montgomery was cool and collected, Kidman was a babbling nervous mess of a witch who just wants to be normal.
Ferrell plays the same character he has played in every movie and tv show since the inception of his career. His lines were horrendous and delivered with a sheer smugness like the actor thought this film would amount to something monumental.
The on-screen chemistry between the two leads was non-existent no matter how much the actors professed in every interview that they became the best of friends in real life. The interviews were just as awkward as Tom Cruise's on-air Oprah confession of his love for the test-tube sweetheart Katie Holmes.
The movies only saving grace, (and no, surprisingly it is not Michael Cain or Shirley McLaine) is Kristen Chenoweth. She ate up every scene she was in remeniscent of the character Paulette from the Legally Blonde films.
Skip Bewitched, the only magical thing this insipid comedy manages to do is make $8.00 disappear into thin air.
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.”
Certified 100% Serious