If you were expecting something of the same quality as last summer’s stupendously awful Stepford Wives remake, I’d advise you lower your expectations.
The steady sludge of recycled Hollywood product – now with added brandibility – reaches a new nadir with Bewitched.
At the very least, you’d think Ms. Kidman would have learned that making merry was not her thing.
An actress whose stature owes entirely more to marriage (she was once hitched to Tom Cruise) and the mediocrity of contemporary starlets than to any visible traces of genius, even her staunchest defenders (blokes carrying a torch since To Die For) cannot find excuse for her ‘comedic’ performances.
Here, she attempts a disastrous impersonation of Monroe in Some Like It Hot minus 100 IQ points.
It’s not a pretty sight and one would fear that her twitty character were in danger of forgetting to breathe, if the prospect of silencing her canned giggling wasn’t so alluring. Well, I told you to lower your expectations.
To be fair, even the buffoonish Will Ferrell can’t wring any joy from Ms. Ephron’s latest confection.
The plot which sees Ferrell’s failed Hollywood egotist plot a television remake of Bewitched, only to accidentally cast a real witch (Kidman, make up your own punchline) in the role of Samantha would seem to offer opportunities for disposable self-reflexive shenanigans.
Instead the haphazard mess of a script uses the iconic television show as lazy padding – entire clip-reels are screened, the theme tune plays ad nauseum and there’s an Elizabeth Montgomery action figure in the windowsill. These are sandwiched between excruciatingly amateurish rom-com exchanges (“You seem very sweet and unkempt and troubled,” clunks Nicole’s shorthand dialogue).
Elsewhere Michael Caine and Shirley Mac Laine’s half-baked secondary romance suddenly disappears with no warning thus providing the only remotely magical happenstance in the entire movie.
Say what you like about old-school Ephron; the stuff may have been smaltzy and formulaic, but it was never this charmless.
A million euro says there won’t be a sequel.