Magic Moments. Review on Bewitched Movie

I may try to think too much, and a be little sadomasochistic, but I sat down to watch Nora Ephron’s remake of the TV show “Bewitched”, decidedly determined to not like it, but was magically taken over by the way the director and her assembled cast including Nicole Kidman, Michael Caine, Will Farrell, and Jason Schwartzman re-invent the story of a witch trying to survive in the world of Man.

This is a film that celebrates a duality of nature and Ephron demonstrates a deft touch at working with a post-modern construct and making it wonderfully lucid on her own terms.

This yin and yang tale is at once a re-make and an original; reality and fantasy; male and female; and a story of a witch hired as an actor in a re-make of a TV show about a make-believe witch(… whew…!).

The film soars through the ethos like an exotic broomstick sprung from the psychosis of Nora Ephron. This double-headed beauty that has spawned from the imagination of the director/producer/writer, affects us with two immediate responses. We want it to succeed as much as we sometimes wish it would fail( … I mean how dare she attempt to re-make a great TV show, and on top of that shoot barbs at Hollywood and all those fragile egos ruling there…!).

Harmony could be called Ephron’s main concern. All those sleepless characters wondering when they will find true love represent the viewer because we all feel those nagging forces in our own lives.

I’m a sucker for love stories, a closet romantic, and I’m willing to go along for the ride with a cute film like Bewitched. The film is a wonderful inside joke, and once we get it, the movie flies, and delivers great stuff.

Nicole Kidman’s Isabel is both otherworldly and mortal, and the combination of these elements pulling her in different directions affords the actress some excellent moments, which she milks for good laughs.

How endearing it is to hear her long to argue about things mortals argue about like what color to paint the bathroom. I love it when she swoons over the fact that Will Farrell’s Jack Wyatt is sweating(a sly joke about how not to let anyone see you sweat I Hollywood). The film is full of these inside/out time-bomb punch lines.

Jason Schwartzman, as Jack's effeminate agent, has the best delivery of the light airy lines that at once seem masculine and feminine, further emphasizing the duality of the film. This actor is a master of delivery. As a fluffy Hollywood agent displaying some real Tom Cruise moves we love it when he tells Jack: “Right now you’re being the Mayor of ptown, and you need to be the Sheriff of Bville.”(It’s funnier in the movie.)

Back in the day, Ephron's re-working of the TV show could be seen as de-constructive, existential, or downright irreverent, but under our sophisticated scope of vision today it is impeccably post-modern- a real thought bender.

Ephron is bonded on terra firma by her grand myth that true love supersedes even the worst of situations, but within this narrative her cinematic souffl? of love conquering all is as real as real can get.

Will Ferrell is Jack Wyatt an actor with minimal talent whose career has been declining steadily. Desperately seeking something that will boost his sagging career and his self esteem, Jack agrees to star in a re-make of the TV show “Bewitched” on the condition that he gets a complete unknown for the female lead to play opposite him. This will ensure that the audience will only be left with Jack to see with lots of screen time. Jack and the producers audition a long roster of wannabes, and in a period of frustration, he sees Isabel(Nicole Kidman) at a cafe and begs her to become an actress and work in his TV show. He is confused when she initially rebuffs his advances, mistaking his attention as declaration of love. Since she is a witch and has been brought up in a world of spells and goblins, without TV, she is unaware of Elizabeth Montgomery’s role of Samantha Stevens and the legacy of the TV show “Bewitched.” Isabel is trying to be a regular mortal person, and ultimately trying to catch a normal husband form the mortal side of reality. During the course of events she finds she must use her magical powers to help things along. But in the end she discovers that she must decide finally between a life spent on earth with mortal man or return home, where she will be a witch forever more.

A tender, sweet love story founded on the incredible premise that a witch decides to enter the mortal world in Hollywood and falls in love with a mortal man who happens to be a TV Star who happens to be casting a re-make of the Bewitched TV show and happens to actually pursue the witch to cast her as one of the lead actors, oh yes and they fall in love!

This premise alone separates Bewitched from other romantic comedies.

At moments during the film there are references to the TV show Bewitched and it is through the role of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stevens that the meaning of the film is understood.

Traditional films represent men as active, controlling subjects and women as passive objects of desire. The theory, greatly reduced, and paraphrased is that men do the looking and control the world while women are there to be looked at and manipulated. This goes right to the heart of what Ephron is going for in her re-make.

At a moment in the film some Will Farrell’s character Jack Wyatt calls Nicole Kidman's character Isabel "Samantha", at which time she corrects him by stating her real name. This is just one moment in a long series of Jack looking at this woman as something she is not.

It is important that at this moment Isabel has at least been able to have this man in her life accept who she really is. The ultimate message that comes through is based more in how men see women.

Bewitched is a film that makes a clear statement that it is based on a TV show and this is one of the masterful ways that Nora Ephron as auteur creates a film that on the outside seems to offend our rarified values while simultaneously succeeding at a level where other re-makes fall short.

Ephron does not insult the audience's intelligence, and this is a major reason why the movie works. We can't watch the film without knowing about the TV show. But we also know about TV in general and the way that Ephron makes the entire action hinge on the ups and downs of Hollywood creates the atmosphere of something even more magical than regular life.

There are things that make us laugh in a movie. Slapstick, word play, irony, and incongruity, when timed right can goose a laugh out of us, and Bewitched has more than few of these moments.

Michael Caine, playing it very straight gets the bulk of the funny lines. Primarily his delivery is straight and for the most part he stands as a mouthpiece for men everywhere mortal or not.

The featurette has great interviews with Nora Ephron which I feel should be part of the main film presentation for adds to the post-modern otherness of the film.

I got my disc at Half.com for$1.50, and it’s a cool date movie even for those who don’t want to talk film theory. It’s great with Nacho Cheese-flavored Doritos and Diet Pepsi. Enjoy!