Scooter Chronicles

On Saturday night, Marcia and I finished watching the movie version of “Bewitched”, starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. It only took us about two weeks to get through it.

Now the two weeks to watch wasn’t because it was bad. (Nigel delays is what caused that.) Of course, it wasn’t great either. They didn’t do a direct remake of the show. Nicole Kidman didn’t play Samantha and Will Ferrell didn’t play Darrin. (After all, if they did do it that way, Jim Carrey would have to play a Dick York Darrin.) It was actually done embracing the past TV show. Ferrell plays Jack Wyatt, an actor who’s career is on the downturn, when him and his agent (Jason Schwartzman) decide to remake the TV show, with him playing Darrin. So they look for a “no-name” (so Jack can be the true star of the show) that can wiggle her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery. The search is going nowhere when Jack finds Isabel Bigelow (Kidman) in a library (or book store) wiggling her nose. The thing is though, that Isabel is indeed a witch herself.

Michael Caine plays Nigel Bigelow, Isabel’s father, and Shirley MacLaine plays actress Iris Smythson who is cast to play Endora. Also along for the ride, though very quickly, is Steve Carrell who plays the only character from the show to appear in the movie outright, that being Paul Lynde’s famous Uncle Arthur. Carrell actually does a great job in portraying the flamboyant and sarcastic relative. The only problem is that I wasn’t sure where Uncle Arthur fits in. Is he Isabel’s uncle, or is he someone else that shows up as Uncle Arthur only to help Jack? It is unclear. Funny, but unclear.

Overall the movie wasn’t bad. Both Marcia and I wanted to see this when we saw the advertisements for it. We didn’t know they had done it the way they did. I wasn’t a huge fan of the TV show, but did watch it and enjoyed it when I did. From what I have read about the movie, the critics disliked it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. At times it seemed that Will Ferrell was trying too hard to be funny. He usually is a bit extreme with his characters, and it works well. But this time it seemed a little too much. Maybe because he turns into Isabel’s love interest. Sorry, other then his height, I just can’t see Nicole Kidman falling for a Ferrell character. And speaking of Kidman, it wasn’t one of her best performances either. But then again we are talking about a movie about a TV sitcom. Though quite frankly I will watch pretty much anything that Nicole Kidman is in. ; )

Probably worth the rent for those of you that were fans of the show. At least if anything, they didn’t ruin it by doing the show directly, but actually paid respect to it. Though it still fits into the “Can’t Hollywood come up with anything original?” category.