Nora Ephron's hit-and-(mainly)-miss screen version of the 1960's hit TV sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery as a witch trying to become a normal American housewife has a marvelously clever twist as its starting point: it doesn't try to adapt the original format, but reinvents it by having as its premise a contemporary TV remake of the original series. The new "Bewitched" sitcom is a last-chance opportunity for washed-out star Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), who accepts to play hapless husband Darrin as long as a complete unknown is cast as Samantha and Wyatt finds her himself in a bookstore: the lovely and somewhat absent-minded Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman), who has just arrived in town in search of love and has never acted in her life. But, just like Samantha, Isabel also happens to be an actual witch dreaming of a normal life... Although Ephron is an old hand at romantic comedy, "Bewitched" never really lives up to the intriguing premise Ferrell, more of a physical comedian, is painfully miscast, a radiant Kidman looks the part but doesn't seem to be in it, and most of the strong supporting cast goes mysteriously unused (a subplot that sees a charming Michael Caine, as Isabel's caddish warlock father, falling for Shirley MacLaine as her TV mother seems as if it was brutally hacked in post-production, as in fact most of MacLaine's role too). A wonderful sound-stage musical interlude to Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft", shaped as a homage to classic MGM musicals, gives a good glimpse of the magic that Ephron failed to apply to the whole enterprise.
Bewitched
(2005)
Miscast screen version of classic sixties sitcom wastes intriguing premise.
26 August 2005