IMPRACTICAL MAGIC : Nora Ephron's 'Bewitched' [4/10]

Monday, 15 August 2005

Midsummer misfire Bewitched - a promising but botched post-modern big-screen adaptation of the ever-popular 1964-1972 American sitcom - is unlikely to feature very highly in any future surveys of Nicole Kidman's glittering career. But if nothing else it's earned her what might well be the nicest compliment she'll ever be paid. The American Human Associatiation - who monitor how animals are treated on-set - are much more sparing with their plaudits than any critic, so bravo to Kidman:

From the sidelines, the magical cat meows and wrinkles her nose when Jack mentions getting married. Trainers rehearsed this scene with the cat using a few different end marks. For the take that made it to the big screen, a trainer placed the cat on Kidman's lap and repeatedly cued her to stay. After the actress gently set down the cat, the animal moved to the end mark on the side of the porch and waited in a sit-stay until receiving a food reward. The shot of Lucinda making magic was a video effect. According to American Humane's Certified Animal Safety Representative monitoring the set, Kidman appeared very helpful and concerned for the cat's needs.

And this isn't the only aspect of Kidman's contribution to the film which is worthy of praise. Stepping into the shoes of the late and much-beloved Elizabeth Montgomery (who played witch-turned-housewife Samantha throughout Bewitched's TV run) can't have been easy, but Kidman is engagingly radiant in a role clearly tailored in the style of an old-fashioned Hollywood 'star vehicle,' while also representing a return to the broomstick-wielding territory she visited in 1998's Practical Magic.

Unfortunately for all concerned, however, this particular vehicle proves a bothersomely, bewilderingly rickety conveyance. Simply put, Nora Ephron (director, and co-writer with sister Delia) just can't cut it - but she's still a 'name' thanks to Sleepless in Seattle, and so can call upon stars as busy and prominent and Kidman and Ferrell. Given their prolific workrates, it was inevitable that this pair's paths would eventually cross. But 'path-crossing' just about sums up their interaction in Bewitched, a supposed "romantic comedy" in which Ferrell's egotisitic, has-been moviestar Jack Wyatt falls for Kidman's Candide-like Isabel Bigalow.

Wyatt seeks to re-invigorate his career by playing Darrin in a new series of Bewitched - enter the 'unknown', untested Isabel - a perfect fit for the Samantha role, not least because she really does have supernatural powers. Isabel has grown jaded of a life in which all her desires are gratified at a finger-click - and so has relocated to the San Fernando Valley in search of real problems and find real love. This bemuses her dad Nigel (Michael Caine), an incorrigible Lothario of a warlock. Though his mood improves when he meets veteran actress Iris Smithson (Shirley MacLaine), who's playing the old Agnes Moorehead role of Samantha's mother Endora. Complications ensue.

There's a pleasing symmetry in there being a Bewitched movie - the show's roots lie in the mortal-romances-sorceress plots of Rene Clair's 1941 I Married A Witch (starring Veronica Lake and Frederic March) and Richard Quine's 1957 Bell, Book and Candle (Kim Novak and James Stewart*). And given the savviness of 21st-century audiences - not to mention the fact that younger viewers may well be more familiar with the Irish girl-group B*witched (no relation) - the post-modern route, with the film's characters repeatedly questioning the wisdom of updating the programme, was probably a sensible one.

Fleeting moments do tickle the funny-bone - there's an in-joke reference to Samantha having a false nose (a nod to Kidman's Hours prosthetic proboscis). And there's a gag in which a dog has to choose between Darrin and his ex-girlfriend - naming said hound 'Satchel' is presumably intended as a sly dig at Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. The picture itself ends up a bit like that hapless pooch: yes, it's cute, but it's also still a dog. MacLaine gets a laugh or two with Iris's shamelessly showboating entrances, but otherwise she - like Caine, Kidman, Ferrell and the talented supporting cast - is frustratingly wasted and/or misused.

The Bewitched-update premise could perhaps have been deployed to make some canny points about the advances or otherwise of American feminism over the decades... Or maybe a giddy, Charlie Kaufman/S1m0ne type romp about the interface between Hollywood movies and the world of TV (the brief clips we see of Jack's flop pictures are painfully unfunny). Ephron should at least have included some kind of a gag about how Darrin was (very famously) played by two different actors - especially given that Jack proves much less popular with the public than his second-billed co-star Isabel.

Instead, the script feels like it's been rewritten and rewritten into a half-baked, cobbled-together rip-off of Neil Labute's barbed satire Nurse Betty - Ephron's fuzziness appearing especially toothless alongside Neil Labute's acid-edged wit. Kidman's last foray into retro-comedy - The Stepford Wives remake - was scarcely more coherent, but at least managed to get by on a certain crazed, campy energy. Bewitched is, by contrast, too often a draggy bore, limping to a notably weak coda that feels, like so much that's gone before, like a slightly desperate afterthought.

Neil Young
16-18th August 2005

BEWITCHED : [4/10] : USA 2005 : Nora EPHRON : 102 mins
seen at Cineworld cinema, Sunderland (UK), 15th August 2005 - press show

* Given Bewitched's various problems, Danny Peary's comments about its cinematic forebears (in his Guide for the Film Fanatic) gain an ominous topicality:
I Married A Witch ... a memorable performance by Lake, who outacts the stiff March. An amusing sidelight is that March and Lake despised one another; according to her autobiography, in one romantic scene, in which they're shown from the waist up, she vindictively put her foot in his crotch, just to watch him squirm.
Bell, Book and Candle ... you'll be disappointed, even bored. Dream comedy cast was assembled - including Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, and Hermione Gingold - but everyone seems to have taken tranquilizers. Picture cries out for wildness, even slapstick humour. Only satisfying scene is romantic finale, which compensates somewhat for the sorry fate of lovers Stewart and Novak in the same years' Vertigo. Lifeless direction by Richard Quine.

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