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""Newsday" Loves New Bewitched"

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""Newsday" Loves New Bewitched"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 11:43 AM (PST)

Witchy woman
Enchanting Kidman works her magic in 'Bewitched'
BY JAN STUART
STAFF WRITER
June 24, 2005
(PG-13). That ditsy '60s sitcom provides the springboard for this surprisingly delightful rethink, in which Nicole Kidman stars as a witch who has been cast opposite egomaniacal Will Ferrell in a television remake. Director Nora Ephron (co-scripting with Delia Ephron) spins out some of her funniest lines since Meg Ryan faked out Billy Crystal at the deli in "When Harry Met Sally." 1:45 (some language including sex and drug references, partial nudity). Area theaters.
In fashioning a viable movie from the warhorse TV hit "Bewitched," director Nora Ephron and sibling co-writer Delia have cleverly stared down a number of gnarly challenges: 1. The original show is noticeably dated and wasn't all that good to begin with; 2. People adored it anyway; 3. A-list comedian Will Ferrell is playing Darrin, a husband role so blandly second-fiddle to his witchy woman Samantha that, as a character comments in the film, "They replaced Darrin on the original 'Bewitched' and no one noticed."

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That comment, as it happens, is made by Ferrell himself, speaking as an anxious movie clown named Jack Wyatt, who hopes to recharge his stalled career in a TV remake of the iconic '60s sitcom. Like most movie stars in comedies about The Business, Jack is quite insecure and full of himself: He insists on an unknown in the Elizabeth Montgomery role so as not to be upstaged.
The joke - one of many self-reflexive jests that this new "Bewitched" traffics in - is that the nonentity he finds, Isabel Bigelow, is played by the most unavoidable actress in Hollywood, Nicole Kidman. And Isabel suffers from a longing Kidman could easily identify with, the desire to live a normal life doing normal-people things. The reason Isabel harbors this yearning, however, is that she is actually a witch: Just like a celebrity, she knows all too well what it's like to snap your fingers and make mountains move.
Leave it to the literarily seasoned Nora Ephron to do a "French Lieutenant's Woman" number on "Bewitched," drawing parallels between the lives of her characters and those they enact in the TV show within the movie. Hence, Isabel and Jack fall in love and, emulating their characters, must negotiate his mortal limitations with her nose-wiggling abracadabrabilities.
The making-of-the-TV-remake conceit solves a number of problems, not the least of which is how to justify the gluttonous comic appetite of the film's "Anchorman" star in a potentially nondescript part. Ephron has managed to finesse a Will Ferrell vehicle from the female-powered source material, without taking a thing away from her leading lady. Ferrell gets to pull some hilarious presto-chango mood swings under the influence of magic spells, while Kidman reasserts her living-legend aspirations with breathy Marilyn Monroe line readings.
In the process of avoiding a feature-length replay of the TV show (a trap "The Honeymooners" walked right into), "Bewitched" edifies die-hard fans by channeling the original's memorable supporting cast. Shirley MacLaine tailors Agnes Moorehead's Endora to her own "Postcard From the Edge" grandiosity; Carole Shelley's batty Aunt Clara is a tribute to Marion Lorne, while Steve Carell's Uncle Arthur is an uncanny evocation of Paul Lynde that merits an honorary seat on "The Hollywood Squares."
The only actor who winds up on the short end of the shtick is Michael Caine. As Isabel's controlling father, Caine is perhaps a bit too earthbound for a buoyant puff of nonsense that floats several broomstick-lengths off the ground.

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Table of contents

RE: , Rob O'Hannon, Jun-23-05, (1)
Philidelphia Inquirer re Bewitched, TV Fanatic, Jun-23-05, (3)
Orange County Weekly on Same, TV Fanatic, Jun-23-05, (4)
The NYTimes says "Thumbs Down", TV Fanatic, Jun-23-05, (5)
USA Today: 2 * out of 4 , TV Fanatic, Jun-23-05, (6)
Salon.Com Loves Kidman; hates the f..., TV Fanatic, Jun-23-05, (7)
D- in Ft. Worth, TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (8)
NY Daily News Thumbs Down, TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (9)
What Do They Say in Herbie J's Home..., TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (10)
Herbie J Interviewed About Bewitche..., TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (11)
CNN on, oh, You Know..., TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (12)
earthtimes.org says "Nay.", TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (13)
And the word from Florida is:, TV Fanatic, Jun-24-05, (14)
RE: And the word from Florida is:, Enough already, Jun-24-05, (15)
RE: And the word from Florida is:, Larry Brody, Jun-24-05, (16)
RE: And the word from Florida is:, Herbie J, Jun-24-05, (17)
RE: And the word from Florida is:, Rob O'Hannon, Jun-24-05, (18)
Let's have another one from New Yor..., Happy Jack, Jun-24-05, (19)

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1. "RE: "

Posted by Rob O'Hannon on Jun-23-05, 12:10 PM (PST)

"1. The original show is noticeably dated and wasn't all that good to begin with"
You'll have to forgive my crudeness here, but I wonder how Jan managed to see the show with his nose so far up Nora's butt.
"Leave it to the literarily seasoned Nora Ephron to do a "French Lieutenant's Woman" number on "Bewitched,..."
This and the rest of the tripe masquarding as an intellectually sensitive review Jan puts out really makes me laugh.

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3. "Philidelphia Inquirer re Bewitched"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 02:21 PM (PST)

Posted on Thu, Jun. 23, 2005

New witch, with glitch
BY CARRIE RICKEY
Philadelphia Inquirer
Review: Bewitched
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for for some language, including sex and drug references, and partial nudity)
Running time: 1:30
Release date: June 24, 2005
Cast: Kristin Chenoweth, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Will Ferrell, Nicole Kidman
Directed by: Nora Ephron
MORE
� Kidman follows her nose to 'Bewitched'
� Will Ferrell finds a way
� Caine mutiny: 'Alfie' quits his womanizing to play father figures
They all laughed when Betty Thomas announced she was making a classic '70s TV show into a feature film. When The Brady Bunch Movie hit, she had the last laugh.
They all laughed when Jerry Bruckheimer announced he was turning a Disneyland theme-park ride into a movie. When Pirates of the Caribbean hit, he had the last laugh.
They all laughed when Nora Ephron announced she was updating a beloved '60s TV comedy. With Bewitched, they have a point.
Bewitched is . . . not unfunny. It boasts an inspired Will Ferrell, a wry Michael Caine, and a turbocharged Shirley MacLaine. When it skewers Hollywood for neutralizing female power it is hilarious. It has some great visual jokes: A witch's broom that collapses like a Swiffer? I split a gut.
But astride that broomstick is Nicole Kidman as a real-life witch tapped to play the sorceress in a TV remake.
Now, Kidman is lithe and lovely and talented. She has an upturned nose that twitches the magic twinkle-twinkle-twink (if you know the show, you know the accompanying effect).
One thing she is not is a clown. She thinks fizzy and dizzy and klutzy are funny. She is mistaken. To be a clown requires a kind of witchcraft.
Clowns have fizz and dizz, but also gravity. Clowns have klutz, but also grace. It is at their most degraded that clowns are the most dignified. Meg Ryan is a clown. Cameron Diaz is a clown. Queen Latifah is a clown. Nicole Kidman is a goddess. (She was great in the satire To Die For because she played it straight.) She is as lost here as Jane Fonda is in Monster-in-Law. She needs some major comic twinkle-twinkle-twink.
Kidman's Isabel Bigelow is a witch who finds it harder to quit magic than smoking. She wants to renounce her powers because what challenge is there for a witch in love, when all you have to do is twitch your nose and get your way? "I want to feel thwarted," Isabel says to her dapper father, Nigel (delicious Michael Caine). Isabel, be careful of what you want.
Isabel falls for washed-up movie star Jack Wyatt (Ferrell, in top form) because he thwarts her. Cast as Samantha the witch opposite Jack's Darrin the doofus on the TV show, Isabel gets marginalized as the part of Darrin is built up at Samantha's expense. But wait, isn't her screen character the one with the power?
Curious in this comedy that satirizes Hollywood for consistently making female characters weak in order for male characters to look strong is that Kidman has been eclipsed by Ferrell. By the time Isabel belatedly transforms from starry-eyed lovey back into the witch of Eastwick, Kidman is unable to seize back the power in this comic battle of the sexes.
As a kid I loved Bewitched for the same reason I loved movies about nuns: They were the only occasions I saw women with power. Who wants a namby-pamby Samantha?
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

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4. "Orange County Weekly on Same"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 02:23 PM (PST)

June 24 - 30, 2005
Oh, the Nora, the Nora
Every little thing she does is tragic
by MICHAEL ATKINSON
I have no idea why Hollywood makes movies derived from TV series that the all-important 15- to 25-year-old ticket-buying demographic has absolutely no firsthand knowledge of, or why those same designated audiences do in fact pay to see them with formidable reliability. But I can tell you this about the new Bewitched: It is an affliction. As if the work of an angry god, the movie collects the perspectives of Nora Ephron (director, co-writer), Delia Ephron (co-writer), and Penny Marshall (producer), coalescing into a showbiz self-suck unrivaled in modern times for smugness, vapidity, and condescension. To spend even 10 minutes in the movie�s universe is to experience the Sartrean nausea of an utterly hollow head and heart.
The original show, lovable and aggressively innocent though it was (I preferred I Dream of Jeannie, if only for Larry Hagman�s manic anxiety), is far too hokey to be considered �high concept,� and at any rate had trouble attracting a daytime rerun viewership by 1976. Our new heroine is a chipmunk-falsettoed, apricot-cheeked Nicole Kidman, who�s so sheeny with digital airbrushing she�s got the unearthly vibrance of a newborn. This new Samantha (Isabel, actually) longs to give up witchery and live like a normal person in Beverly Hills (!), but before long she meets up with descending megastar Will Ferrell, who�s making a new Bewitched TV series! So she falls for him and gets cast as Samantha, even though she�s actually a witch! Isn�t that a fucking riot?! As always a fool for wealth porn, Ephron also jams her scenes with swatches and memorabilia from the old show�postmod!�and virtually every sequence change is an occasion for a song interlude. �Witchy Woman,� �Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,� Sinatra on �Witchcraft,� the Police�s �Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.� I�m dying!
It�s symptomatic of the recycling-regurgitating Hollywood dynamic that the TV show within the movie doesn�t resemble anything a real network would make today�for all of their navel-gazing insider-ness, Ephron, Ephron, and Marshall are as clueless as farm turkeys. Kidman cutes it up, and Ferrell is so fearless in the face of the tasks put before him that he should get a Nobel, but it�s nothing they couldn�t do while brushing their teeth, or more to the point, paying their bills. The film is airy and weightless, not like, say, chiffon, but like the black smoke of burning truck tires. In an ideal world, Marshall and the Ephrons should have to sharecrop, for all the good they�ve done for the culture.

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5. "The NYTimes says "Thumbs Down""

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 08:38 PM (PST)

...But you've got to read to the end to find it.
Trying to Update the 60's, Just a Twitch at a Time
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Once upon a television time, when witches, genies and homemaker vampires ruled the roost, the war of the sexes was as cute as the button nose on Elizabeth Montgomery's face. As the star of the dimwitted delight "Bewitched," Ms. Montgomery wiggled her protuberance at a husband whose bumbling ways turned a topical power struggle into the stuff of canned laughter.
For some, 1964 is fondly remembered as the year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a civil rights act, barring sex discrimination in the workplace, as well as the year Ms. Montgomery materialized as the gauzily sexy witch Samantha.
"Bewitched" is now a big-screen movie with Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell and a nicely tuned supporting cast. Because the ethereally beautiful Ms. Kidman no longer resembles a real person, having been buffed to almost supernatural perfection in the way of most modern stars, casting her as a witch was inspired.
Equally clever is the film's core conceit, which finds her playing Isabel Bigelow, a reluctant witch who is cast as Samantha in a remake of the original sitcom. Anxious to leave behind the world of spells and (especially, it seems) warlocks, Isabel yearns for the simple life, much as Eddie Albert did when he moved next door to a pig on "Green Acres." Instead, the witch becomes a star.
This multisituational silliness is agreeably watchable for an hour. Isabel, having made a vow to go on the witchcraft wagon, settles into a dream of a house complete with a white picket fence, a garlanded lawn and a tortoise-shell cat. Much like other cultural aliens, both extraterrestrial and those fresh off the boat, sweet Isabel is charmingly overwhelmed by her new world.
She relishes the idea of shopping like a mere mortal but doesn't give any thought to how to pay for her groceries. And when she tries to hook up the cable, she (understandably) turns on the charms. It's no wonder that her father, Nigel (Michael Caine), casts a skeptical eye at his daughter; he seems to know that relinquishing your power is no easy thing.
These early scenes unfold smoothly, and it appears that the director, Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay with her sister, Delia Ephron, gave some thought to what it might be like to be a witch who suddenly has to live in the human world.
It's pleasant just to watch Ms. Kidman float through the movie's sets like a visitor from another land; she's as adorable as E.T., though her voice is as baby-breathy as that of Marilyn Monroe. Ms. Kidman has of late become perhaps overly fond of speaking in such undertones (it makes you wonder if she permanently strained her vocal cords), but here the
kittenish delivery adds a crucial softness, a sense of comfort, that doesn't come naturally to this actress.
During the first years of "Bewitched," Ms. Montgomery was one of the era's stealth vixens, a woman whose alert eyes darted under the cover of unthreatening blondeness. Unlike Lucy Ricardo, from whose canyon mouth flowed a river of complaint (and whose restlessness always felt somehow tragic), Samantha really did seem like the girl next door who was happy to become the model wife.
The great joke of "Bewitched" was that unlike Lucy, Samantha had enormous power but kept it in check to placate her husband, unless it served her purposes. It's a sign of the times - and perhaps of the fact that women wrote, directed and produced this film - that Samantha's surrendering her power in a marriage no longer seems as believable as her becoming a celebrity.
The story, such as it is, kicks in when the movie star Jack Wyatt (a relatively unplugged Will Ferrell) tries to kick-start a faltering career by starring in a television redo of "Bewitched." Because he's playing Darrin, the witch's genially hapless husband, Jack angles for an unknown as Samantha, the better to hog all the limelight.
He ends up with Ms. Kidman's Isabel ostensibly because not a single woman in Los Angeles's vast reservoir of acting talent can wiggle her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery. Yet Isabel is also cute, easily improvises with Jack about witch dos and don'ts (you need a permit for a poisoned apple and so forth) and looks mighty fine on camera, which temporarily works against her when she tests better than Jack with the audience.
Ms. Kidman and Mr. Ferrell are not an intuitive match, and the romantic side of the story is both half-hearted and half-baked. But this self-contained actress has rarely come across as relaxed in the company of another performer.
For his part, Mr. Ferrell enjoys a few ticklishly funny moments with Ms. Kidman and Jason Schwartzman, playing his sycophant manager. And the sight (and sounds) of his biking onto the set while loudly singing his own name has comic tang, as does a more developed scene in which Jack pretends he's insufferably pampered. Mr. Ferrell looks more streamlined than he has in the past, perhaps in concession to the story's low-wattage romance, but Nora Ephron's attempts to turn him into Tom Hanks Lite are unfortunate.
Best known for screenplays like "When Harry Met Sally" and for bowdlerizing Lubitsch's "Shop Around the Corner" with her execrable "You've Got Mail," Ms. Ephron is one of those directors whose work is only as good as her cast and crew. Outside of the performers there isn't much to look at here, but given the cavalcade of supporting characters there are some distractions, including Shirley MacLaine, Heather Burns and Stephen Colbert. Along with the two stars, they keep the film in gear until it hits the hour mark, whereupon it dies. (Steve Carell, doing Paul Lynde doing Uncle Arthur, provides some late relief.)
The film's screenwriters conjured up a very clever gimmick when they decided to revamp a favorite 60's television show. Too bad they forgot that a gimmick is no substitute for a screenplay, never mind a real movie.

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6. "USA Today: 2 * out of 4 "

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 09:13 PM (PST)

'Bewitched' doesn't conjure up much
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Will Ferrell recently announced on The Daily Show that Bewitched "is more a public service than a comedy" about the evils of sorcery. His quip came after host Jon Stewart expressed mock concern for audiences who will be exposed to black magic. Ferrell was quick on the uptake, kidding that "when you get mixed up in witchcraft, you get burned."
She�s a witch who wants to play a witch on TV: Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell play Isabel and Jack, who play Samantha and Darrin.
Columbia Pictures
And when talented actors and filmmakers get mixed up in convoluted remakes of witchy '60s TV shows, the audience gets burned. (Related video: Watch the Bewitched trailer)
In the movie, Ferrell's egocentric character, Jack Wyatt, keeps explaining to people, "It's not the same Bewitched you remember. It's retooled." And not for the better.
Where the sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery was elegantly simple, the movie's concept is forced and clunky. Isabel (Nicole Kidman) is a real witch who is trying to go straight and live a normal life. Meanwhile, Wyatt is desperately trying to restart his floundering acting career. He is set on playing Darrin in a remake of the sitcom and begins to audition Samanthas. Isabel is hired mainly because of her expert nose-wiggling skills. So Isabel is a witch, and she's playing one on TV. (We're meant to wonder if this is also true for Shirley MacLaine, who plays Endora.)

Isabel, who has slogged through bad relationships with warlocks and wizards, is interested in Jack and the romantic mortal potential he offers. But Jack isn't looking for love or even someone to share his stardom. Once Isabel figures it out, she is faced with doing what she swore she wouldn't: using her powers.
Kidman is a capable, serious actress who takes professional risks. With the exception of last year's Stepford Wives, she lately has made some interesting choices (Birth and Dogville). She excelled in the darkly humorous To Die For a decade ago, playing a maniacally ambitious TV personality. In this film, she's the polar opposite: sweet, ditzy and boring. And the screenplay, written by Nora and Delia Ephron, isn't very funny, either.
Ferrell is a seriously talented comedian. So why does he choose to get mixed up in such bad high-concept movies? Last month, it was Kicking & Screaming. One longs for his smaller, scene-stealing parts in movies such as Zoolander.
Bewitched does have a few laughs, thanks to Ferrell's antics. And some of the wittiest contemporary comedians are on board, notably The Office's Steve Carell and The Daily Show's Stephen Colbert, but they are underused.
Bewitched will not cast you under its spell. It is more likely to bother and bewilder.

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7. "Salon.Com Loves Kidman; hates the film"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 09:18 PM (PST)

"Bewitched"
With her gimmicky remake, Nora Ephron proves that no mere mortal can stifle Nicole Kidman's magic.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Stephanie Zacharek

June 24, 2005 | Like just about all her movies, Nora Ephron's gimmicky reimagining of the old TV show "Bewitched" has a synthetic, plasticky aroma, like a mingling of chemicals designed to simulate breezy fresh air -- the whole thing feels as if it's just been popped out of a dry-cleaning bag. Ephron must have figured no one would believe the show's premise that a witch who's yearning to live the life of a human would marry a regular suburban guy and try to make a go of it as a typical housewife.
So Ephron (who also co-wrote the script, with her sister Delia) instead gives us a witch (Isabel Bigelow, played by Nicole Kidman) who drops into California's San Fernando Valley and, by a stroke of luck, lands the leading role in a modern-day version of "Bewitched," opposite a fading, egomaniacal jerk of an actor (Will Ferrell's Jack Wyatt) who thinks playing the husband, Darrin, is his ticket back to fame and fortune. Jack quickly realizes that Isabel is so charming she could easily upstage him, so he tries to sabotage her. Meanwhile, though, Isabel is on her way to falling in love with him: She has so little experience with human guys that she doesn't realize what a self-absorbed creep he is.
The artificiality of "Bewitched" is so exaggerated that it almost works in the movie's favor for the first 20 minutes or so, before that heavy synthetic Ephron odor really sets in. "Bewitched" is Ephron's version of a Charlie Kaufman script -- Hey kids! Let's make a remake about a remake! -- and as little fondness as I have for Kaufman's winking, self-referential script-mazes, they're works of genius compared with Ephron's heavily rehearsed Jazzercise moves.
Here's a montage of Jack and Isabel on a first date; here's Isabel desperately trying to tell him she's a witch, only to have him insult and anger her (she dashes off on her broomstick, the equivalent of flouncing out of a fancy restaurant). You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out: The picture hits every mark predictably as if each one had been laid out beforehand with an X of masking tape. The picture even looks abnormally shiny: Shot by John Lindley, it has an unreal pastel glow that's pretty to look at until you realize how little the light varies from scene to scene, as if it's been blanded out by Zoloft.
Ideally, "Bewitched" would be the sort of movie no sensible person would dare to bother with. But there's a catch, and her name is Nicole Kidman. Whenever Kidman appears, it's as if she's taking everything that's phony about the picture -- intentionally and otherwise -- and buffing it down to a soft glow. She alone makes the movie almost tolerable. While Ferrell is certainly likable enough to withstand being cast as a schmo with an inflated ego, the character's shenanigans grow wearisome early on. And Michael Caine, dapper and winning, pops up periodically as Isabel's father, but there isn't nearly enough of him.
At least we have Kidman, who looks smashing in her wardrobe of Easter egg-colored cardigans and '50s-style crinoline skirts, but who also delivers her lines (even the most ridiculous ones) as if the overstuffed travesty around her were actually a model of subtlety. Kidman borrows Marilyn Monroe's breathy "Mr. Pwesident" delivery, without making it seem like a stunt. In an early scene, Isabel is crestfallen when a real-estate agent, after showing her her dream house, requests references: "I don't have any of those," she coos, her eyes widening to the size of kiddie pools (before tugging on her ear, the equivalent of the Elizabeth Montgomery nose twitch, to make the agent forget she'd ever asked for references in the first place).
Like most actors who have earned the dubiously significant adjective "serious," Kidman doesn't get to do many comedies. Her performance in "Bewitched" is the only thing in the movie with a gossamer touch -- her face has a marvelously appealing capacity for registering wicked delight. At one point, finally pushed to the breaking point by Jack's selfish behavior, she unleashes a dirt-devil storm of invective. When Jason Schwartzman, who plays Jack's sleazy, smooth-talking agent, Richie, tries to intercede, she fixes him with a hypnotic garden-snake glare: "You be quiet or I'll give you a tail!" Her voice is as soft as ever, but it's also shot through with rainbow thunderbolts. Richie blanches and retreats, as any sensible mortal would. Kidman will have the last laugh; not even Ephron, with her dumb flying house of a movie, can crush her magic.

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8. "D- in Ft. Worth"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:08 AM (PST)

That old blech magic
Christopher Kelly
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Published: Friday, June 24, 2005
In Bewitched, Nicole Kidman plays Isabel Bigelow, a witch who moves to the San Fernando Valley in hopes of leading a more normal life. Where Isabel has moved from is never explained (Another city? Another planet?) but clearly our heroine has tasted her fair share of tainted Kool-Aid over the years. She speaks in a tone that's both faintly British and oddly baby-dollish -- imagine Madonna crossed with the little girl in Poltergeist. Her behavior, meanwhile, alternates between the slow-witted and the lobotomized. Is it possible that a grown woman (even a witch from some faraway land) would not be able to comprehend the difference between a TV sitcom and real life? Or that she wouldn't know the meanings of basic curse words? (And if she's such a talented magician, couldn't she, um, just conjure up for herself a brain?)
The central joke -- if that's what you'd call it -- is that this real-world witch ends up getting cast in the Samantha part in a modern-day update of the classic witch-next-door TV series Bewitched. Isabel is discovered twinkling her nose in a bookstore by Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), the washed-up Hollywood movie star who plays Darrin on this new Bewitched series. She then promptly nails her audition because -- get it? -- she's not really acting. This is all supposed to be very postmodern and sly -- and maybe it might have been, if every gag weren't so painstakingly underlined and if the characters had something resembling an actual conflict to resolve. But Bewitched runs out of both wit and plot after about 10 minutes -- at which point, the only thing that seems to be propelling it forward is the filmmakers' contractual obligation to deliver a feature-length movie.
Listlessly directed (by Nora Ephron) and ineptly written (by Ephron and her sister Delia), Bewitched betrays the same sort of contempt for its audience as Monster-in-Law, Be Cool and The Honeymooners; it's one of those Hollywood movies in which the proceedings are predicated entirely on the characters' staggering stupidity. We never grasp Isabel's motivations (why, for instance, has she tired of the witching life?) and we certainly don't understand her transformation, halfway through the film, from guileless sweetheart to sinister schemer.
Nothing connects in this movie, and the filmmakers know it -- so they resort to the tired tack of hauling out aging Oscar winners in shticky supporting parts to briefly shake us out of our stupor. Doing the dubious honors in Bewitched are Shirley MacLaine, as the hammy actress who plays Endora, and Michael Caine as Isabel's scampish warlock father. Both actors have their moments, and I wish they could have hung around a little longer, but the screenplay inexplicably shuffles them both right out of the final third of the movie.
The only reason to see Bewitched is for its considerable train-wreck appeal -- indeed, it's rare that you get to see two talented, A-list stars get hung out to dry in quite this manner. There isn't an actress on the planet who could have made sense of Isabel, but Kidman is dreadfully miscast -- too prissy and calculating to play the naif. (Following last year's equally misbegotten Stepford Wives remake, you also can't help but wonder if she's become too much the aloof and brittle ice diva to ever play comedy again.)
As for Ferrell, Ephron leaves him to his own devices -- a deadly mistake for a performer whose comedy can so quickly spin out of control. In Bewitched, Ferrell does his galumphing man-child routine, flailing his body around the set, gesticulating wildly and making oddball faces and voices. But his desperation to be loved is so palpable as to be depressing -- after a while you wish someone would give him a Valium and a hug, and let him go home from work early. Ferrell runs amok, though I guess that's more than you can say for the movie surrounding him -- which just meanders amok.
GRADE: D-

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9. "NY Daily News Thumbs Down"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:10 AM (PST)

Conjuring up a big dud
'Bewitched' a bumpy ride for Kidman and Co.
Nicole Kidman, Shirley MacLaine and Will Ferrell star in 'Bewitched.'
The film fails to cast a spell on viewers.
Kidman and Carole Shelley in film based on the hit '60s television series.
One Star1.5 Stars
Bewitched. With Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell. Director: Nora Ephron (1:38). PG-13: Language, mild sex references.
There were gales of audience laughter at the preview of Nora Ephron's adaptation of the '60s TV comedy "Bewitched" - but almost all of it came from the soundtrack.
The laughter is produced by people on-screen watching episodes of a revived "Bewitched" series being taped in a Hollywood studio. They're providing the so-called "canned laughter" that viewers will later hear at home. Ironically, that what these audiences are cracking up over isn't remotely funny is one of the few things in the movie that is.
Ephron clearly adores her source and, with co-writers Delia Ephron and Adam McKay, came up with a fairly clever way of revisiting the series about a witch and her mortal husband. But the result, at best, is a sweet failure.
There is no bigger or sweeter failure in the film than Will Ferrell, the "Saturday Night Live" alum for whom the phrase "big lug" might have been invented. Since his hit movie "Elf," in which he plays a large human raised as a wrecking-ball Santa's helper, I've come to think of that role as autobiographical.
Here, the elfin Ferrell plays Jack Wyatt, a fast-fading movie star who deigns to play Darrin Stephens in a "Bewitched" revival, on the condition that Darrin be made the central character of the show and Jack gets to choose his co-star.
The producers agree and Jack goes hunting for an amateur who can wiggle her nose and stay out of his way. As luck would have it, the woman he finds - Nicole Kidman's Isabel Bigelow - is not only a witch, but one with the exact personality of the character played by Elizabeth Montgomery.
Like Samantha, Isabel wants nothing more than to be normal, with a house in the burbs and a loving, mortal husband. But witchery is a hard habit to break and, when tempted by anger or jealousy to use her magic - as she often is after falling in love with Jack - well, the girl can't help it.
If your only complaint about the original series is that there wasn't enough magic, hop aboard. When Isabel isn't making things and people move, disappear or change shapes, her doting father (Michael Caine) or her dotty aunt (Carole Shelley) are.
The new "episodes" being shot in the film are slapstick nonsense, which is why the audience's gut-busting laughter is so amusing. But while the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jack and Isabel captures the essence of the relationship between Darrin and Samantha in the series, the chemistry between Ferrell and Kidman doesn't.
And though there are funny bits here and there, the script just isn't funny enough.
Ferrell's puppyish physical comedy runs the gamut from annoying to tiresome, and though Kidman is comfortable enough under the skin of Isabel to have played Samantha 40 years ago, the script betrays and ultimately embarrasses her.
I didn't see every "Bewitched" episode, but I don't think Montgomery ever rode a broomstick.
And if your taste for uncured ham is no stronger than mine, be warned that Shirley MacLaine - Le Grand Ham herself - sashays through the film as the witchy actress playing Samantha's mom, Endora.
Overall, "Bewitched" plays like a desperate pilot for its own TV show, and I'm sure the producers were hoping for at least a sequel. My guess is that it will not be picked up.

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10. "What Do They Say in Herbie J's Home Town?"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:11 AM (PST)

Mediocre magic
'Bewitched' remake with Nicole Kidman never quite casts its spell
Jack Garner
Staff film critic
(June 24, 2005) � The '60s TV sitcom Bewitched was never as good as the woman who played Samantha the witch � the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery. Ditto the new Bewitched, an only mildly entertaining sitcom enlivened by Nicole Kidman.
Kidman is Isabel Bigelow, an inexperienced young woman hired as an unknown to play Samantha in a modern Hollywood remake of the TV series. She wins because of the cute way she twitches her nose in Montgomery fashion. But, unbeknownst to her co-star, Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), and to the show's producers, Isabel really is a witch.
Hollywood suffers from a disease called remake-itis, trying (usually in vain) to breathe new life into everything from The Honeymooners to The Dukes of Hazzard. But director-co-writer Nora Ephron at least deserves kudos for an original concept:
Instead of remaking the show, which might have been a disaster, Ephron generates a comedy about actors in modern Hollywood who attempt to remake the show. The retooled Bewitched is a sitcom-within-a-movie, but witchcraft manifests itself in and outside the show.
The results are fresh, but not always hilarious, perhaps because the film comes at us in too many layers: Isabel is trying to be "normal" and give up casting spells. Jack has made two disastrous films and is trying to revive a flagging career. Isabel and Jack attempt a romance, which is usually foiled by Jack's considerable ego. The network is trying to get a show to work. And Isabel's wacky witch relatives keep appearing to muck up the works. Witchcraft or not, it's not easy to keep that many plates spinning.
Ferrell strains for laughs from a role that was strictly a reactive straight man in the original Bewitched. (In fact, that dilemma is one of the running gags of this film, but it doesn't help hide the strain.) Similarities abound with Ferrell's characters in Kicking and Screaming and Anchorman. Familiarity breeds less laughter.
Supporting players are up and down. Shirley MacLaine goes for unadulterated ham in her flamboyant portrayal of Isabel's witch mother (played on TV by the great Agnes Moorehead), as does Steve Carell, who badly imitates the late Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. Michael Caine, though, shows his typically flawless and restrained talent as Isabel's mischievous warlock father.
Kidman rises above the others with another sparkling comic performance, giving Isabel great appeal and empathy, demonstrating first-rate comic timing and wonderful reactions. Though the film never quite gets off the ground, Kidman soars, with or without a broom.
JGARNER@DemocratandChronicle.com

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11. "Herbie J Interviewed About Bewitched"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 07:15 AM (PST)

This is a printer friendly version from the Democrat and Chronicle:
June 24, 2005
Show's loyal fan wrote the book on 'Bewitched'
Jack Garner
Staff film critic
For Rochester native Herbie J Pilato, the new Bewitched isn't just a movie. It's a paean to a show he's long loved, and it means a few new paragraphs in a new edition of his book, Bewitched Forever, the story of the original Elizabeth Montgomery TV series.
The book led Pilato to a meeting with director-screenwriter Nora Ephron as she began planning the production. "I wanted to be sure the movie would be true to the mythology of Bewitched," Pilato says. "I thought the script was awesome, but there were things that needed to be fixed. Some things in it were more sci-fi than fantasy." He reminded them, "they don't use gadgets, they use magic."
Though Pilato isn't credited on the screen, he says he's allowed to use the term "consultant" in reference to the film. "And I got a check." Apparently, he also sold quite a few more copies of his book, because Ephron bought books for all the cast and crew members. (Two copies are visible on screen during the film.)
Bewitched has long been Pilato's favorite TV show, and original star Montgomery is a favorite actress. (He was thrilled to interview her four times for his book.) He published Bewitched Forever (Tapestry Press, $18.95) in 1996. Since then, Pilato has been bicoastal, spending time in Rochester with family and friends, and jetting to the coast to work on various projects, including the screenplay for a TV movie, currently being discussed.
Pilato will be at Barnes & Noble, 330 Greece Ridge Center Drive, for a book signing beginning at 7 p.m. July 8.

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12. "CNN on, oh, You Know..."

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 07:22 AM (PST)

Review: 'Bewitched' has some magic
Film ephemeral but enjoyable
By Paul Clinton
For CNN.com
(CNN) -- The new word in Hollywood for remaking an old movie or television show is "reimagining." That sounds so much better than "recycling" -- or "cinematic grave-robbing."
Unfortunately, a really good remake -- excuse me, reimagining -- is as rare as a Hollywood agent who does charity work on weekends.
The big-screen version of "Bewitched" is one of those exceptions. It works.
And the main reason it works is the way that director Nora Ephron and her co-writer sister Delia approached the story. Instead of simply doing an updated version of the original TV series, they've set the movie in the present day, where a studio has decided to do a remake -- yes, damn it, a remake -- of "Bewitched," the long-running (1964-72) ABC sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery.
But the twist is, the show has been retooled to center on Samantha's mortal husband, Darrin, played by a narcissistic, washed-out movie star trying to make a comeback. Moreover, unbeknownst to the producers, they've cast a real witch to play the role of Samantha.
The result is not only an homage to the original TV show, it's also a gentle -- and at times hilarious -- spoof of Hollywood.
Nicole Kidman is well cast as Isabel, a young witch desperate to lead a normal life without witchcraft. When Kidman won an Academy Award for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours," much ado was made over her prosthetic nose. This time it's her real nose getting the attention, due to its uncanny resemblance to Montgomery's -- right down to the ability to make it twitch on cue.
In an unlikely bit of casting, Will Ferrell plays opposite Kidman as Jack Wyatt, the over- confident and under-talented actor portraying Darrin. Determined to take center stage in the TV show, Jack goes in search of a nobody to play Samantha. He finds her in a book store on Sunset Boulevard. Attracted to the aforementioned nose, he convinces Isabel to audition for the role.
She's an inept mess until she's told to improvise playing a real witch trying to pass as a mortal. Naturally, she nails it. She also begins to fall in love with Jack, mistakenly thinking his overblown ego makes him the quintessential mortal with whom she can lead a normal life.
So Isabel tells Jack she's a real witch. And the trouble starts.
Light comedy
Ephron wisely resists the temptation to burden the film with too many special effects, making the few CGI touches much more effective -- particularly a great bit with Isabel in a supermarket.
Kidman is usually drawn to material on the dark side, but her comedic skills are on full display in "Bewitched." She's without doubt one of the most versatile and accomplished actresses of her generation.
Unlike millions, I'm not a big fan of Farrell, but he delivers a well-contained performance as a total jerk who -- in the end -- turns out to be just an insecure guy with (of course) a heart of gold.
The film, already lighter than meringue, is not without its flaws. Both Michael Caine (as Isabel's rakish warlock father, Nigel) and Shirley MacLaine (as an aging diva selected to play "Bewitched" mother Endora) are criminally underused.
The two do take the opportunity to grab any scene they're in. Caine is charmingly dissolute and MacLaine gets the best line in the film: "Actors look normal, sometimes better than normal," she tells Isabel at one point. "But deep down, there is no deep down."
Carole Shelly does a nice turn as ditsy Aunt Clara and Steve Carell channels Paul Lynne playing Uncle Arthur. Also, Jason Schwartzman is a standout as Jack's sleazy manager.
The Ephron sisters have a knack for sparkling dialogue and they use it to great advantage in "Bewitched." Sure, like cotton candy, the film can be a little sticky sweet at times. Ultimately, however, it's an enjoyable summertime confection.

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13. "earthtimes.org says "Nay.""

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 12:48 PM (PST)

Bewitched fails to cast a spell on audiences
Posted on : 2005-06-24 | Author : Peter Goodyear
News Category : Entertainment
Ardent couch potatoes, who remember Elizabeth Montogomery�s nose-twitchingly happy-go-lucky sitcom �Bewitched� and expect the same kind of histrionics from the film of the same name, are in for a disappointment. The film goes behind-the-scenes of the popular sitcom and manages to brew a disaster.
Bewitched, starring the bewitchingly beautiful Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, lacks the easygoing charm of its television counterpart.
A pretty little witch Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) is determined to live a normal life, asserting, �I want to have days when my hair is affected by the weather.�
Actor Jack Wyatt (Ferrell), whose career is on a decline, is to star in a television serial about a �normal� man called Darrin Stephens married to a witch (again, one that wants a �normal� life) called Samantha.
So, he goes searching for a newcomer who can�t overshadow him and finds Isabel in a coffee shop. Isabel�s nose (after all, Kidman�s is the most sought after nose in the world!) gets her into the film. Aunt Clara (Carole Shelley), along with Isabel�s daddy (Michael Caine) and Endora (Shirley MacLaine) come with the territory. What follow are mishaps brewed by a bunch of witches and warlocks, determined to contribute their two bits into the making of the sitcom.
The film tries its hand at slapstick, and fails miserably. But Jack�s sycophantic agent, Jason Schwartzman, manages to encourage a few laughs. Jack and Isabel are supposed to be falling in love. But the chemistry between Ferrell and Kidman causes no explosion. The film does sport a few funny moments. But not enough to pay for the audience�s ticket cost.
Ferrell�s humour is tiresome, and though Kidman easily slips into Samantha�s personality, she fails to carry the rest of the burden gracefully. Screenwriter Nora Ephron, as Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein�s wife might have known the identity of Watergate�s Deep Throat but she knows precious little about writing an effective script.
�I got a phone call, about, I don't know, about two years ago from Amy Pascal, who is the head of Columbia Pictures, and she said that she had Nicole Kidman coming in to meet with her about doing a �Bewitched� movie. And could I come up with a plot by 11 am the next morning?� Ephron had said during an interview. Trust us, the fact that the script was hastily thrown together shows. Go only if masochism turns you on.

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14. "And the word from Florida is:"

Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 12:49 PM (PST)

Bewitched � bothered and bewildering
It takes more than a twitch of the nose for a classy remake Print E-mail
24 Jun 2005
MOVIE REVIEW by Peter Covino
After seeing Nicole Kidman play a witch, you realize just how good Elizabeth Montgomery was in Bewitched.
It�s not that this new Bewitched, directed by Nora Ephron (You�ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle), is awful, but it just doesn�t light a candle, bell, book or otherwise to the ABC classic series.
Ephron takes an interesting enough twist on the series. This Bewitched isn�t a remake. Will Ferrell plays an actor with a big ego who is down on his luck and reluctantly agrees to do a new TV version of Bewitched. To make sure his �Darrin Stevens� isn�t outshined by Samantha, he finds a complete unknown for the witch�s role.
The twist, of course, is that Isabel (Kidman), who is hired to play Samantha, really is a witch who is trying to cut down on her witchy ways.
This is all fun and games for a while. There are some laughs in the supermarket when Isabel keeps getting unwanted advice from her father (Michael Caine), who is also a warlock. As Isabel shops, dad�s face keeps popping up on some of America�s favorite food items, such as a box of fish sticks with the Gorton Fisherman or Newman�s Own Popcorn.
Back on the set, there are some more chuckles as Samantha/Isabel realizes she doesn�t have much of a role in this new Bewitched, because of her jealous co-star, and uses a little magic to make Samantha the focal point of the show.
But this is a love story, first and foremost, and that is also Bewitched�s weakest point. Ferrell and Kidman just don�t work much magic of their own on the screen so it�s hard to get wrapped up in their on again/off again romance. By film�s end, the romance has become tedious at best.
Sadder still is Shirley MacLaine�s casting as Endora. MacLaine is always a delight to watch, and her casting as Samantha�s mother-in-law should have been one of Bewitched magical highlights, but she really doesn�t have a whole lot to say or do, so it is mostly a wasted effort.
Fans of the old TV show may be pleased with brief appearances by Uncle Arthur and Aunt Clara, two of Samantha�s best loved relatives, but with new actors in the roles, it only makes you realize just how good Paul Lynde and Marion Lorne were in the original series.
By the time the curtain falls, and Isabel and Jeff (Ferrell) finally set up house together, Bewitched may just leave you bothered if not bewildered.

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15. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"

Posted by Enough already on Jun-24-05, 01:07 PM (PST)

who the fuck cares?

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16. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"

Posted by Larry Brody on Jun-24-05, 01:14 PM (PST)

I do.
I'm rooting for Herbie J.
I'm the TV Fanatic this time around.
And I love comparing the different reviews to see how the same thing can be construed by different people so many different ways. There's a huge lesson in this for anyone trying to get things before an audience.
LYMI,

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17. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"

Posted by Herbie J on Jun-24-05, 02:53 PM (PST)

Thank you, Larry...
And not for anything, for some reason, I just had this PSYCHIC vision that the movie is gonna be a HIT!

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18. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"

Posted by Rob O'Hannon on Jun-24-05, 03:15 PM (PST)

Herbie, knowing your passion for "Bewitched" and sharing some of the passion for understated complications of innocence, I hope someone learns a lesson here.

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19. "Let's have another one from New York!"

Posted by Happy Jack on Jun-24-05, 06:09 PM (PST)

HEX ED
The most inept director in Hollywood twitches her nose.
By Armond White
Bewitched
Directed by Nora Ephron
Every time you see Nicole Kidman's mug on a magazine cover, think: hegemony. This lovely-looking yet only moderately talented woman has won blanket media approval despite no proven box-office popularity and without giving so much as a single credible performance. It's both funny and scary that she also has such an uncanny knack for fake art. From lousy films like To Die For and Moulin Rouge, to the half-bad Eyes Wide Shut; from pretentious, enervating films like The Hours, Dogville and Birth, to the recent, racist The Interpreter�all have made her the darling of gullible critics and the wannabe intellectual set who get revved up with each new marketable release. Kidman does it again with Bewitched, a peculiarly uninspired updating of the 1960s television series into a pop-art meta-film.
Treating 60s junk culture as a paradigm of the pop experience is less than clever. It's the smug approach of a lazy hack. Yes, this Bewitched is written and directed by Nora Ephron, perhaps the most inept director in Hollywood today. The original series concerned a centuries-old witch, Samantha (played by Elizabeth Montgomery), marrying a mortal man and struggling to restrain her dark powers�and wacky relatives�in exchange for the joys of normal life. Ephron dares a "complicated" plot in which the old series is revived as a vehicle for a vain, modern actor (Will Ferrell) who unwittingly hires an actual witch, Isabelle (Kidman) for the Samantha role. Ephron scuttles her own gimmick when Isabelle complains about the mindless remake: "This is supposed to be about a real marraiage and real problems, like what color to paint the kitchen."
I was reminded of Ephron's 1993 appearance on The Charlie Rose Show, bragging about hiring Sven Nykvist�the cinematic equivalent of what color to paint the kitchen. In Bewitched, label-conscious Ephron has no idea other than to emulate The Truman Show and Ed-TV. (Piran-dull-o.) Those heavily ironic movies pretended to be media-savvy but merely congratulated audiences on their idiotic familiarity (and comfort) with tv-making and showbiz routines. This false sophistication is tv-trite (no surprise, Penny Marshall shares producer credit with Ephron). Bewitched has the same facile Happy Days�style phony sentiment that makes Ron Howard's movies inane. (How does Garry Marshall occasionally advance past it, achieving acceptable sentiment in Overboard, Flamingo Kid, Raising Helen?) Ephron has learned to reprocess romantic comedy (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail), crafting schlock movies that trivialize male-female relations into clich�s supposedly ratified by their cabaret soundtracks.
Bewitched repeats that formula yet fails its aim at Hollywood satire because it starts out idolizing Isabelle for her witch's privilege. ("Every woman wants to be a witch," she says. She snaps her fingers for home-and-garden furnishings not unlike the rewards of evil at the end of The Player.) In a sequence working a lawn sprinkler, microwave oven and a light switch, there's ease on top of privilege. So lucking into an insipid tv job and falling in love with her co-star is a bimbo's vision of life. It relates to nothing except, maybe, the fact that like Kidman, Ephron's industry connections have given her undeserved carte blanche. The daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, she married into power and socialized profitably. Thus, you come out of a Nora Ephron romance knowing less about love than when you went in. Similarly, you come out of a Nicole Kidman film with your sensitivity stunted and your taste insulted. (Moulin Rouge is one of the rare films that, by the time it's over, makes you tired of cinema.)
Thanks to Ephron, you'd never guess that the tv series had legitimate antecedents�the 1958 James Stewart�Kim Novak Bell, Book and Candle, a comic flip of Vertigo about a witch longing to be human (critic Dennis Delrogh compared it to A.I.); and Rene Clair's 1942 I Married a Witch, a comedy based on social opprobrium and sheer cinematic rhythm. Ephron pilfers the tv series, not bothering with style or thematic coherence�just accidental post-modernism, some contempt for pop taste (as in Nurse Betty) and a reliance on Kidman's sham histrionics. Isabelle isn't smart and conflicted like Samantha; she's an imbecile who just wants to fall in love. Speaking in a Marilyn Monroe dingbat voice, Kidman uses her vacant placidity to contrast Will Ferrell's klutziness. But they're not in sync; after Mr. and Mrs. Smith this is the second screwball catastrophe this month.
And here's the hegemonic part: Both Nicky and Nora, celebrity cineastes, consistently make movies that distort and misrepresent human behavior, leaving viewers content with the Hollywood status quo. They operate under the guise of "entertainment" and "art," but their collective films couldn't be more dishonest and unenlightening if they had deliberately conspired to deceive. Kidman and Ephron, the queens of kitsch, are a match from hell.

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""Newsday" Loves New Bewitched"
Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 11:43 AM (PST)
Witchy woman Enchanting Kidman works her magic in 'Bewitched' BY JAN STUART STAFF WRITER June 24, 2005 (PG-13). That ditsy '60s sitcom provides the springboard for this surprisingly delightful rethink, in which Nicole Kidman stars as a witch who has been cast opposite egomaniacal Will Ferrell in a television remake. Director Nora Ephron (co-scripting with Delia Ephron) spins out some of her funniest lines since Meg Ryan faked out Billy Crystal at the deli in "When Harry Met Sally." 1:45 (some language including sex and drug references, partial nudity). Area theaters. In fashioning a viable movie from the warhorse TV hit "Bewitched," director Nora Ephron and sibling co-writer Delia have cleverly stared down a number of gnarly challenges: 1. The original show is noticeably dated and wasn't all that good to begin with; 2. People adored it anyway; 3. A-list comedian Will Ferrell is playing Darrin, a husband role so blandly second-fiddle to his witchy woman Samantha that, as a character comments in the film, "They replaced Darrin on the original 'Bewitched' and no one noticed." advertisement advertisement That comment, as it happens, is made by Ferrell himself, speaking as an anxious movie clown named Jack Wyatt, who hopes to recharge his stalled career in a TV remake of the iconic '60s sitcom. Like most movie stars in comedies about The Business, Jack is quite insecure and full of himself: He insists on an unknown in the Elizabeth Montgomery role so as not to be upstaged. The joke - one of many self-reflexive jests that this new "Bewitched" traffics in - is that the nonentity he finds, Isabel Bigelow, is played by the most unavoidable actress in Hollywood, Nicole Kidman. And Isabel suffers from a longing Kidman could easily identify with, the desire to live a normal life doing normal-people things. The reason Isabel harbors this yearning, however, is that she is actually a witch: Just like a celebrity, she knows all too well what it's like to snap your fingers and make mountains move. Leave it to the literarily seasoned Nora Ephron to do a "French Lieutenant's Woman" number on "Bewitched," drawing parallels between the lives of her characters and those they enact in the TV show within the movie. Hence, Isabel and Jack fall in love and, emulating their characters, must negotiate his mortal limitations with her nose-wiggling abracadabrabilities. The making-of-the-TV-remake conceit solves a number of problems, not the least of which is how to justify the gluttonous comic appetite of the film's "Anchorman" star in a potentially nondescript part. Ephron has managed to finesse a Will Ferrell vehicle from the female-powered source material, without taking a thing away from her leading lady. Ferrell gets to pull some hilarious presto-chango mood swings under the influence of magic spells, while Kidman reasserts her living-legend aspirations with breathy Marilyn Monroe line readings. In the process of avoiding a feature-length replay of the TV show (a trap "The Honeymooners" walked right into), "Bewitched" edifies die-hard fans by channeling the original's memorable supporting cast. Shirley MacLaine tailors Agnes Moorehead's Endora to her own "Postcard From the Edge" grandiosity; Carole Shelley's batty Aunt Clara is a tribute to Marion Lorne, while Steve Carell's Uncle Arthur is an uncanny evocation of Paul Lynde that merits an honorary seat on "The Hollywood Squares." The only actor who winds up on the short end of the shtick is Michael Caine. As Isabel's controlling father, Caine is perhaps a bit too earthbound for a buoyant puff of nonsense that floats several broomstick-lengths off the ground.
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1. "RE: "
Posted by Rob O'Hannon on Jun-23-05, 12:10 PM (PST)
"1. The original show is noticeably dated and wasn't all that good to begin with" You'll have to forgive my crudeness here, but I wonder how Jan managed to see the show with his nose so far up Nora's butt. "Leave it to the literarily seasoned Nora Ephron to do a "French Lieutenant's Woman" number on "Bewitched,..." This and the rest of the tripe masquarding as an intellectually sensitive review Jan puts out really makes me laugh.
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	3. "Philidelphia Inquirer re Bewitched"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 02:21 PM (PST)
	Posted on Thu, Jun. 23, 2005 New witch, with glitch BY CARRIE RICKEY Philadelphia Inquirer Review: Bewitched MPAA rating: PG-13 (for for some language, including sex and drug references, and partial nudity) Running time: 1:30 Release date: June 24, 2005 Cast: Kristin Chenoweth, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Will Ferrell, Nicole Kidman Directed by: Nora Ephron MORE � Kidman follows her nose to 'Bewitched' � Will Ferrell finds a way � Caine mutiny: 'Alfie' quits his womanizing to play father figures They all laughed when Betty Thomas announced she was making a classic '70s TV show into a feature film. When The Brady Bunch Movie hit, she had the last laugh. They all laughed when Jerry Bruckheimer announced he was turning a Disneyland theme-park ride into a movie. When Pirates of the Caribbean hit, he had the last laugh. They all laughed when Nora Ephron announced she was updating a beloved '60s TV comedy. With Bewitched, they have a point. Bewitched is . . . not unfunny. It boasts an inspired Will Ferrell, a wry Michael Caine, and a turbocharged Shirley MacLaine. When it skewers Hollywood for neutralizing female power it is hilarious. It has some great visual jokes: A witch's broom that collapses like a Swiffer? I split a gut. But astride that broomstick is Nicole Kidman as a real-life witch tapped to play the sorceress in a TV remake. Now, Kidman is lithe and lovely and talented. She has an upturned nose that twitches the magic twinkle-twinkle-twink (if you know the show, you know the accompanying effect). One thing she is not is a clown. She thinks fizzy and dizzy and klutzy are funny. She is mistaken. To be a clown requires a kind of witchcraft. Clowns have fizz and dizz, but also gravity. Clowns have klutz, but also grace. It is at their most degraded that clowns are the most dignified. Meg Ryan is a clown. Cameron Diaz is a clown. Queen Latifah is a clown. Nicole Kidman is a goddess. (She was great in the satire To Die For because she played it straight.) She is as lost here as Jane Fonda is in Monster-in-Law. She needs some major comic twinkle-twinkle-twink. Kidman's Isabel Bigelow is a witch who finds it harder to quit magic than smoking. She wants to renounce her powers because what challenge is there for a witch in love, when all you have to do is twitch your nose and get your way? "I want to feel thwarted," Isabel says to her dapper father, Nigel (delicious Michael Caine). Isabel, be careful of what you want. Isabel falls for washed-up movie star Jack Wyatt (Ferrell, in top form) because he thwarts her. Cast as Samantha the witch opposite Jack's Darrin the doofus on the TV show, Isabel gets marginalized as the part of Darrin is built up at Samantha's expense. But wait, isn't her screen character the one with the power? Curious in this comedy that satirizes Hollywood for consistently making female characters weak in order for male characters to look strong is that Kidman has been eclipsed by Ferrell. By the time Isabel belatedly transforms from starry-eyed lovey back into the witch of Eastwick, Kidman is unable to seize back the power in this comic battle of the sexes. As a kid I loved Bewitched for the same reason I loved movies about nuns: They were the only occasions I saw women with power. Who wants a namby-pamby Samantha? Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
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	4. "Orange County Weekly on Same"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 02:23 PM (PST)
	June 24 - 30, 2005 Oh, the Nora, the Nora Every little thing she does is tragic by MICHAEL ATKINSON I have no idea why Hollywood makes movies derived from TV series that the all-important 15- to 25-year-old ticket-buying demographic has absolutely no firsthand knowledge of, or why those same designated audiences do in fact pay to see them with formidable reliability. But I can tell you this about the new Bewitched: It is an affliction. As if the work of an angry god, the movie collects the perspectives of Nora Ephron (director, co-writer), Delia Ephron (co-writer), and Penny Marshall (producer), coalescing into a showbiz self-suck unrivaled in modern times for smugness, vapidity, and condescension. To spend even 10 minutes in the movie�s universe is to experience the Sartrean nausea of an utterly hollow head and heart. The original show, lovable and aggressively innocent though it was (I preferred I Dream of Jeannie, if only for Larry Hagman�s manic anxiety), is far too hokey to be considered �high concept,� and at any rate had trouble attracting a daytime rerun viewership by 1976. Our new heroine is a chipmunk-falsettoed, apricot-cheeked Nicole Kidman, who�s so sheeny with digital airbrushing she�s got the unearthly vibrance of a newborn. This new Samantha (Isabel, actually) longs to give up witchery and live like a normal person in Beverly Hills (!), but before long she meets up with descending megastar Will Ferrell, who�s making a new Bewitched TV series! So she falls for him and gets cast as Samantha, even though she�s actually a witch! Isn�t that a fucking riot?! As always a fool for wealth porn, Ephron also jams her scenes with swatches and memorabilia from the old show�postmod!�and virtually every sequence change is an occasion for a song interlude. �Witchy Woman,� �Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,� Sinatra on �Witchcraft,� the Police�s �Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.� I�m dying! It�s symptomatic of the recycling-regurgitating Hollywood dynamic that the TV show within the movie doesn�t resemble anything a real network would make today�for all of their navel-gazing insider-ness, Ephron, Ephron, and Marshall are as clueless as farm turkeys. Kidman cutes it up, and Ferrell is so fearless in the face of the tasks put before him that he should get a Nobel, but it�s nothing they couldn�t do while brushing their teeth, or more to the point, paying their bills. The film is airy and weightless, not like, say, chiffon, but like the black smoke of burning truck tires. In an ideal world, Marshall and the Ephrons should have to sharecrop, for all the good they�ve done for the culture.
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	5. "The NYTimes says "Thumbs Down""
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 08:38 PM (PST)
	...But you've got to read to the end to find it. Trying to Update the 60's, Just a Twitch at a Time By MANOHLA DARGIS Once upon a television time, when witches, genies and homemaker vampires ruled the roost, the war of the sexes was as cute as the button nose on Elizabeth Montgomery's face. As the star of the dimwitted delight "Bewitched," Ms. Montgomery wiggled her protuberance at a husband whose bumbling ways turned a topical power struggle into the stuff of canned laughter. For some, 1964 is fondly remembered as the year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a civil rights act, barring sex discrimination in the workplace, as well as the year Ms. Montgomery materialized as the gauzily sexy witch Samantha. "Bewitched" is now a big-screen movie with Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell and a nicely tuned supporting cast. Because the ethereally beautiful Ms. Kidman no longer resembles a real person, having been buffed to almost supernatural perfection in the way of most modern stars, casting her as a witch was inspired. Equally clever is the film's core conceit, which finds her playing Isabel Bigelow, a reluctant witch who is cast as Samantha in a remake of the original sitcom. Anxious to leave behind the world of spells and (especially, it seems) warlocks, Isabel yearns for the simple life, much as Eddie Albert did when he moved next door to a pig on "Green Acres." Instead, the witch becomes a star. This multisituational silliness is agreeably watchable for an hour. Isabel, having made a vow to go on the witchcraft wagon, settles into a dream of a house complete with a white picket fence, a garlanded lawn and a tortoise-shell cat. Much like other cultural aliens, both extraterrestrial and those fresh off the boat, sweet Isabel is charmingly overwhelmed by her new world. She relishes the idea of shopping like a mere mortal but doesn't give any thought to how to pay for her groceries. And when she tries to hook up the cable, she (understandably) turns on the charms. It's no wonder that her father, Nigel (Michael Caine), casts a skeptical eye at his daughter; he seems to know that relinquishing your power is no easy thing. These early scenes unfold smoothly, and it appears that the director, Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay with her sister, Delia Ephron, gave some thought to what it might be like to be a witch who suddenly has to live in the human world. It's pleasant just to watch Ms. Kidman float through the movie's sets like a visitor from another land; she's as adorable as E.T., though her voice is as baby-breathy as that of Marilyn Monroe. Ms. Kidman has of late become perhaps overly fond of speaking in such undertones (it makes you wonder if she permanently strained her vocal cords), but here the kittenish delivery adds a crucial softness, a sense of comfort, that doesn't come naturally to this actress. During the first years of "Bewitched," Ms. Montgomery was one of the era's stealth vixens, a woman whose alert eyes darted under the cover of unthreatening blondeness. Unlike Lucy Ricardo, from whose canyon mouth flowed a river of complaint (and whose restlessness always felt somehow tragic), Samantha really did seem like the girl next door who was happy to become the model wife. The great joke of "Bewitched" was that unlike Lucy, Samantha had enormous power but kept it in check to placate her husband, unless it served her purposes. It's a sign of the times - and perhaps of the fact that women wrote, directed and produced this film - that Samantha's surrendering her power in a marriage no longer seems as believable as her becoming a celebrity. The story, such as it is, kicks in when the movie star Jack Wyatt (a relatively unplugged Will Ferrell) tries to kick-start a faltering career by starring in a television redo of "Bewitched." Because he's playing Darrin, the witch's genially hapless husband, Jack angles for an unknown as Samantha, the better to hog all the limelight. He ends up with Ms. Kidman's Isabel ostensibly because not a single woman in Los Angeles's vast reservoir of acting talent can wiggle her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery. Yet Isabel is also cute, easily improvises with Jack about witch dos and don'ts (you need a permit for a poisoned apple and so forth) and looks mighty fine on camera, which temporarily works against her when she tests better than Jack with the audience. Ms. Kidman and Mr. Ferrell are not an intuitive match, and the romantic side of the story is both half-hearted and half-baked. But this self-contained actress has rarely come across as relaxed in the company of another performer. For his part, Mr. Ferrell enjoys a few ticklishly funny moments with Ms. Kidman and Jason Schwartzman, playing his sycophant manager. And the sight (and sounds) of his biking onto the set while loudly singing his own name has comic tang, as does a more developed scene in which Jack pretends he's insufferably pampered. Mr. Ferrell looks more streamlined than he has in the past, perhaps in concession to the story's low-wattage romance, but Nora Ephron's attempts to turn him into Tom Hanks Lite are unfortunate. Best known for screenplays like "When Harry Met Sally" and for bowdlerizing Lubitsch's "Shop Around the Corner" with her execrable "You've Got Mail," Ms. Ephron is one of those directors whose work is only as good as her cast and crew. Outside of the performers there isn't much to look at here, but given the cavalcade of supporting characters there are some distractions, including Shirley MacLaine, Heather Burns and Stephen Colbert. Along with the two stars, they keep the film in gear until it hits the hour mark, whereupon it dies. (Steve Carell, doing Paul Lynde doing Uncle Arthur, provides some late relief.) The film's screenwriters conjured up a very clever gimmick when they decided to revamp a favorite 60's television show. Too bad they forgot that a gimmick is no substitute for a screenplay, never mind a real movie.
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	6. *"USA Today: 2 out of 4 "**
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 09:13 PM (PST)
	'Bewitched' doesn't conjure up much By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY Will Ferrell recently announced on The Daily Show that Bewitched "is more a public service than a comedy" about the evils of sorcery. His quip came after host Jon Stewart expressed mock concern for audiences who will be exposed to black magic. Ferrell was quick on the uptake, kidding that "when you get mixed up in witchcraft, you get burned." She�s a witch who wants to play a witch on TV: Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell play Isabel and Jack, who play Samantha and Darrin. Columbia Pictures And when talented actors and filmmakers get mixed up in convoluted remakes of witchy '60s TV shows, the audience gets burned. (Related video: Watch the Bewitched trailer) In the movie, Ferrell's egocentric character, Jack Wyatt, keeps explaining to people, "It's not the same Bewitched you remember. It's retooled." And not for the better. Where the sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery was elegantly simple, the movie's concept is forced and clunky. Isabel (Nicole Kidman) is a real witch who is trying to go straight and live a normal life. Meanwhile, Wyatt is desperately trying to restart his floundering acting career. He is set on playing Darrin in a remake of the sitcom and begins to audition Samanthas. Isabel is hired mainly because of her expert nose-wiggling skills. So Isabel is a witch, and she's playing one on TV. (We're meant to wonder if this is also true for Shirley MacLaine, who plays Endora.) Isabel, who has slogged through bad relationships with warlocks and wizards, is interested in Jack and the romantic mortal potential he offers. But Jack isn't looking for love or even someone to share his stardom. Once Isabel figures it out, she is faced with doing what she swore she wouldn't: using her powers. Kidman is a capable, serious actress who takes professional risks. With the exception of last year's Stepford Wives, she lately has made some interesting choices (Birth and Dogville). She excelled in the darkly humorous To Die For a decade ago, playing a maniacally ambitious TV personality. In this film, she's the polar opposite: sweet, ditzy and boring. And the screenplay, written by Nora and Delia Ephron, isn't very funny, either. Ferrell is a seriously talented comedian. So why does he choose to get mixed up in such bad high-concept movies? Last month, it was Kicking & Screaming. One longs for his smaller, scene-stealing parts in movies such as Zoolander. Bewitched does have a few laughs, thanks to Ferrell's antics. And some of the wittiest contemporary comedians are on board, notably The Office's Steve Carell and The Daily Show's Stephen Colbert, but they are underused. Bewitched will not cast you under its spell. It is more likely to bother and bewilder.
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	7. "Salon.Com Loves Kidman; hates the film"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-23-05, 09:18 PM (PST)
	"Bewitched" With her gimmicky remake, Nora Ephron proves that no mere mortal can stifle Nicole Kidman's magic. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Stephanie Zacharek June 24, 2005 \| Like just about all her movies, Nora Ephron's gimmicky reimagining of the old TV show "Bewitched" has a synthetic, plasticky aroma, like a mingling of chemicals designed to simulate breezy fresh air -- the whole thing feels as if it's just been popped out of a dry-cleaning bag. Ephron must have figured no one would believe the show's premise that a witch who's yearning to live the life of a human would marry a regular suburban guy and try to make a go of it as a typical housewife. So Ephron (who also co-wrote the script, with her sister Delia) instead gives us a witch (Isabel Bigelow, played by Nicole Kidman) who drops into California's San Fernando Valley and, by a stroke of luck, lands the leading role in a modern-day version of "Bewitched," opposite a fading, egomaniacal jerk of an actor (Will Ferrell's Jack Wyatt) who thinks playing the husband, Darrin, is his ticket back to fame and fortune. Jack quickly realizes that Isabel is so charming she could easily upstage him, so he tries to sabotage her. Meanwhile, though, Isabel is on her way to falling in love with him: She has so little experience with human guys that she doesn't realize what a self-absorbed creep he is. The artificiality of "Bewitched" is so exaggerated that it almost works in the movie's favor for the first 20 minutes or so, before that heavy synthetic Ephron odor really sets in. "Bewitched" is Ephron's version of a Charlie Kaufman script -- Hey kids! Let's make a remake about a remake! -- and as little fondness as I have for Kaufman's winking, self-referential script-mazes, they're works of genius compared with Ephron's heavily rehearsed Jazzercise moves. Here's a montage of Jack and Isabel on a first date; here's Isabel desperately trying to tell him she's a witch, only to have him insult and anger her (she dashes off on her broomstick, the equivalent of flouncing out of a fancy restaurant). You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out: The picture hits every mark predictably as if each one had been laid out beforehand with an X of masking tape. The picture even looks abnormally shiny: Shot by John Lindley, it has an unreal pastel glow that's pretty to look at until you realize how little the light varies from scene to scene, as if it's been blanded out by Zoloft. Ideally, "Bewitched" would be the sort of movie no sensible person would dare to bother with. But there's a catch, and her name is Nicole Kidman. Whenever Kidman appears, it's as if she's taking everything that's phony about the picture -- intentionally and otherwise -- and buffing it down to a soft glow. She alone makes the movie almost tolerable. While Ferrell is certainly likable enough to withstand being cast as a schmo with an inflated ego, the character's shenanigans grow wearisome early on. And Michael Caine, dapper and winning, pops up periodically as Isabel's father, but there isn't nearly enough of him. At least we have Kidman, who looks smashing in her wardrobe of Easter egg-colored cardigans and '50s-style crinoline skirts, but who also delivers her lines (even the most ridiculous ones) as if the overstuffed travesty around her were actually a model of subtlety. Kidman borrows Marilyn Monroe's breathy "Mr. Pwesident" delivery, without making it seem like a stunt. In an early scene, Isabel is crestfallen when a real-estate agent, after showing her her dream house, requests references: "I don't have any of those," she coos, her eyes widening to the size of kiddie pools (before tugging on her ear, the equivalent of the Elizabeth Montgomery nose twitch, to make the agent forget she'd ever asked for references in the first place). Like most actors who have earned the dubiously significant adjective "serious," Kidman doesn't get to do many comedies. Her performance in "Bewitched" is the only thing in the movie with a gossamer touch -- her face has a marvelously appealing capacity for registering wicked delight. At one point, finally pushed to the breaking point by Jack's selfish behavior, she unleashes a dirt-devil storm of invective. When Jason Schwartzman, who plays Jack's sleazy, smooth-talking agent, Richie, tries to intercede, she fixes him with a hypnotic garden-snake glare: "You be quiet or I'll give you a tail!" Her voice is as soft as ever, but it's also shot through with rainbow thunderbolts. Richie blanches and retreats, as any sensible mortal would. Kidman will have the last laugh; not even Ephron, with her dumb flying house of a movie, can crush her magic.
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	8. "D- in Ft. Worth"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:08 AM (PST)
	That old blech magic Christopher Kelly Fort Worth Star-Telegram Published: Friday, June 24, 2005 In Bewitched, Nicole Kidman plays Isabel Bigelow, a witch who moves to the San Fernando Valley in hopes of leading a more normal life. Where Isabel has moved from is never explained (Another city? Another planet?) but clearly our heroine has tasted her fair share of tainted Kool-Aid over the years. She speaks in a tone that's both faintly British and oddly baby-dollish -- imagine Madonna crossed with the little girl in Poltergeist. Her behavior, meanwhile, alternates between the slow-witted and the lobotomized. Is it possible that a grown woman (even a witch from some faraway land) would not be able to comprehend the difference between a TV sitcom and real life? Or that she wouldn't know the meanings of basic curse words? (And if she's such a talented magician, couldn't she, um, just conjure up for herself a brain?) The central joke -- if that's what you'd call it -- is that this real-world witch ends up getting cast in the Samantha part in a modern-day update of the classic witch-next-door TV series Bewitched. Isabel is discovered twinkling her nose in a bookstore by Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), the washed-up Hollywood movie star who plays Darrin on this new Bewitched series. She then promptly nails her audition because -- get it? -- she's not really acting. This is all supposed to be very postmodern and sly -- and maybe it might have been, if every gag weren't so painstakingly underlined and if the characters had something resembling an actual conflict to resolve. But Bewitched runs out of both wit and plot after about 10 minutes -- at which point, the only thing that seems to be propelling it forward is the filmmakers' contractual obligation to deliver a feature-length movie. Listlessly directed (by Nora Ephron) and ineptly written (by Ephron and her sister Delia), Bewitched betrays the same sort of contempt for its audience as Monster-in-Law, Be Cool and The Honeymooners; it's one of those Hollywood movies in which the proceedings are predicated entirely on the characters' staggering stupidity. We never grasp Isabel's motivations (why, for instance, has she tired of the witching life?) and we certainly don't understand her transformation, halfway through the film, from guileless sweetheart to sinister schemer. Nothing connects in this movie, and the filmmakers know it -- so they resort to the tired tack of hauling out aging Oscar winners in shticky supporting parts to briefly shake us out of our stupor. Doing the dubious honors in Bewitched are Shirley MacLaine, as the hammy actress who plays Endora, and Michael Caine as Isabel's scampish warlock father. Both actors have their moments, and I wish they could have hung around a little longer, but the screenplay inexplicably shuffles them both right out of the final third of the movie. The only reason to see Bewitched is for its considerable train-wreck appeal -- indeed, it's rare that you get to see two talented, A-list stars get hung out to dry in quite this manner. There isn't an actress on the planet who could have made sense of Isabel, but Kidman is dreadfully miscast -- too prissy and calculating to play the naif. (Following last year's equally misbegotten Stepford Wives remake, you also can't help but wonder if she's become too much the aloof and brittle ice diva to ever play comedy again.) As for Ferrell, Ephron leaves him to his own devices -- a deadly mistake for a performer whose comedy can so quickly spin out of control. In Bewitched, Ferrell does his galumphing man-child routine, flailing his body around the set, gesticulating wildly and making oddball faces and voices. But his desperation to be loved is so palpable as to be depressing -- after a while you wish someone would give him a Valium and a hug, and let him go home from work early. Ferrell runs amok, though I guess that's more than you can say for the movie surrounding him -- which just meanders amok. GRADE: D-
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	9. "NY Daily News Thumbs Down"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:10 AM (PST)
	Conjuring up a big dud 'Bewitched' a bumpy ride for Kidman and Co. Nicole Kidman, Shirley MacLaine and Will Ferrell star in 'Bewitched.' The film fails to cast a spell on viewers. Kidman and Carole Shelley in film based on the hit '60s television series. One Star1.5 Stars Bewitched. With Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell. Director: Nora Ephron (1:38). PG-13: Language, mild sex references. There were gales of audience laughter at the preview of Nora Ephron's adaptation of the '60s TV comedy "Bewitched" - but almost all of it came from the soundtrack. The laughter is produced by people on-screen watching episodes of a revived "Bewitched" series being taped in a Hollywood studio. They're providing the so-called "canned laughter" that viewers will later hear at home. Ironically, that what these audiences are cracking up over isn't remotely funny is one of the few things in the movie that is. Ephron clearly adores her source and, with co-writers Delia Ephron and Adam McKay, came up with a fairly clever way of revisiting the series about a witch and her mortal husband. But the result, at best, is a sweet failure. There is no bigger or sweeter failure in the film than Will Ferrell, the "Saturday Night Live" alum for whom the phrase "big lug" might have been invented. Since his hit movie "Elf," in which he plays a large human raised as a wrecking-ball Santa's helper, I've come to think of that role as autobiographical. Here, the elfin Ferrell plays Jack Wyatt, a fast-fading movie star who deigns to play Darrin Stephens in a "Bewitched" revival, on the condition that Darrin be made the central character of the show and Jack gets to choose his co-star. The producers agree and Jack goes hunting for an amateur who can wiggle her nose and stay out of his way. As luck would have it, the woman he finds - Nicole Kidman's Isabel Bigelow - is not only a witch, but one with the exact personality of the character played by Elizabeth Montgomery. Like Samantha, Isabel wants nothing more than to be normal, with a house in the burbs and a loving, mortal husband. But witchery is a hard habit to break and, when tempted by anger or jealousy to use her magic - as she often is after falling in love with Jack - well, the girl can't help it. If your only complaint about the original series is that there wasn't enough magic, hop aboard. When Isabel isn't making things and people move, disappear or change shapes, her doting father (Michael Caine) or her dotty aunt (Carole Shelley) are. The new "episodes" being shot in the film are slapstick nonsense, which is why the audience's gut-busting laughter is so amusing. But while the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jack and Isabel captures the essence of the relationship between Darrin and Samantha in the series, the chemistry between Ferrell and Kidman doesn't. And though there are funny bits here and there, the script just isn't funny enough. Ferrell's puppyish physical comedy runs the gamut from annoying to tiresome, and though Kidman is comfortable enough under the skin of Isabel to have played Samantha 40 years ago, the script betrays and ultimately embarrasses her. I didn't see every "Bewitched" episode, but I don't think Montgomery ever rode a broomstick. And if your taste for uncured ham is no stronger than mine, be warned that Shirley MacLaine - Le Grand Ham herself - sashays through the film as the witchy actress playing Samantha's mom, Endora. Overall, "Bewitched" plays like a desperate pilot for its own TV show, and I'm sure the producers were hoping for at least a sequel. My guess is that it will not be picked up.
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	10. "What Do They Say in Herbie J's Home Town?"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 03:11 AM (PST)
	Mediocre magic 'Bewitched' remake with Nicole Kidman never quite casts its spell Jack Garner Staff film critic (June 24, 2005) � The '60s TV sitcom Bewitched was never as good as the woman who played Samantha the witch � the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery. Ditto the new Bewitched, an only mildly entertaining sitcom enlivened by Nicole Kidman. Kidman is Isabel Bigelow, an inexperienced young woman hired as an unknown to play Samantha in a modern Hollywood remake of the TV series. She wins because of the cute way she twitches her nose in Montgomery fashion. But, unbeknownst to her co-star, Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), and to the show's producers, Isabel really is a witch. Hollywood suffers from a disease called remake-itis, trying (usually in vain) to breathe new life into everything from The Honeymooners to The Dukes of Hazzard. But director-co-writer Nora Ephron at least deserves kudos for an original concept: Instead of remaking the show, which might have been a disaster, Ephron generates a comedy about actors in modern Hollywood who attempt to remake the show. The retooled Bewitched is a sitcom-within-a-movie, but witchcraft manifests itself in and outside the show. The results are fresh, but not always hilarious, perhaps because the film comes at us in too many layers: Isabel is trying to be "normal" and give up casting spells. Jack has made two disastrous films and is trying to revive a flagging career. Isabel and Jack attempt a romance, which is usually foiled by Jack's considerable ego. The network is trying to get a show to work. And Isabel's wacky witch relatives keep appearing to muck up the works. Witchcraft or not, it's not easy to keep that many plates spinning. Ferrell strains for laughs from a role that was strictly a reactive straight man in the original Bewitched. (In fact, that dilemma is one of the running gags of this film, but it doesn't help hide the strain.) Similarities abound with Ferrell's characters in Kicking and Screaming and Anchorman. Familiarity breeds less laughter. Supporting players are up and down. Shirley MacLaine goes for unadulterated ham in her flamboyant portrayal of Isabel's witch mother (played on TV by the great Agnes Moorehead), as does Steve Carell, who badly imitates the late Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. Michael Caine, though, shows his typically flawless and restrained talent as Isabel's mischievous warlock father. Kidman rises above the others with another sparkling comic performance, giving Isabel great appeal and empathy, demonstrating first-rate comic timing and wonderful reactions. Though the film never quite gets off the ground, Kidman soars, with or without a broom. JGARNER@DemocratandChronicle.com
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	11. "Herbie J Interviewed About Bewitched"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 07:15 AM (PST)
	This is a printer friendly version from the Democrat and Chronicle: June 24, 2005 Show's loyal fan wrote the book on 'Bewitched' Jack Garner Staff film critic For Rochester native Herbie J Pilato, the new Bewitched isn't just a movie. It's a paean to a show he's long loved, and it means a few new paragraphs in a new edition of his book, Bewitched Forever, the story of the original Elizabeth Montgomery TV series. The book led Pilato to a meeting with director-screenwriter Nora Ephron as she began planning the production. "I wanted to be sure the movie would be true to the mythology of Bewitched," Pilato says. "I thought the script was awesome, but there were things that needed to be fixed. Some things in it were more sci-fi than fantasy." He reminded them, "they don't use gadgets, they use magic." Though Pilato isn't credited on the screen, he says he's allowed to use the term "consultant" in reference to the film. "And I got a check." Apparently, he also sold quite a few more copies of his book, because Ephron bought books for all the cast and crew members. (Two copies are visible on screen during the film.) Bewitched has long been Pilato's favorite TV show, and original star Montgomery is a favorite actress. (He was thrilled to interview her four times for his book.) He published Bewitched Forever (Tapestry Press, $18.95) in 1996. Since then, Pilato has been bicoastal, spending time in Rochester with family and friends, and jetting to the coast to work on various projects, including the screenplay for a TV movie, currently being discussed. Pilato will be at Barnes & Noble, 330 Greece Ridge Center Drive, for a book signing beginning at 7 p.m. July 8.
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	12. "CNN on, oh, You Know..."
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 07:22 AM (PST)
	Review: 'Bewitched' has some magic Film ephemeral but enjoyable By Paul Clinton For CNN.com (CNN) -- The new word in Hollywood for remaking an old movie or television show is "reimagining." That sounds so much better than "recycling" -- or "cinematic grave-robbing." Unfortunately, a really good remake -- excuse me, reimagining -- is as rare as a Hollywood agent who does charity work on weekends. The big-screen version of "Bewitched" is one of those exceptions. It works. And the main reason it works is the way that director Nora Ephron and her co-writer sister Delia approached the story. Instead of simply doing an updated version of the original TV series, they've set the movie in the present day, where a studio has decided to do a remake -- yes, damn it, a remake -- of "Bewitched," the long-running (1964-72) ABC sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery. But the twist is, the show has been retooled to center on Samantha's mortal husband, Darrin, played by a narcissistic, washed-out movie star trying to make a comeback. Moreover, unbeknownst to the producers, they've cast a real witch to play the role of Samantha. The result is not only an homage to the original TV show, it's also a gentle -- and at times hilarious -- spoof of Hollywood. Nicole Kidman is well cast as Isabel, a young witch desperate to lead a normal life without witchcraft. When Kidman won an Academy Award for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours," much ado was made over her prosthetic nose. This time it's her real nose getting the attention, due to its uncanny resemblance to Montgomery's -- right down to the ability to make it twitch on cue. In an unlikely bit of casting, Will Ferrell plays opposite Kidman as Jack Wyatt, the over- confident and under-talented actor portraying Darrin. Determined to take center stage in the TV show, Jack goes in search of a nobody to play Samantha. He finds her in a book store on Sunset Boulevard. Attracted to the aforementioned nose, he convinces Isabel to audition for the role. She's an inept mess until she's told to improvise playing a real witch trying to pass as a mortal. Naturally, she nails it. She also begins to fall in love with Jack, mistakenly thinking his overblown ego makes him the quintessential mortal with whom she can lead a normal life. So Isabel tells Jack she's a real witch. And the trouble starts. Light comedy Ephron wisely resists the temptation to burden the film with too many special effects, making the few CGI touches much more effective -- particularly a great bit with Isabel in a supermarket. Kidman is usually drawn to material on the dark side, but her comedic skills are on full display in "Bewitched." She's without doubt one of the most versatile and accomplished actresses of her generation. Unlike millions, I'm not a big fan of Farrell, but he delivers a well-contained performance as a total jerk who -- in the end -- turns out to be just an insecure guy with (of course) a heart of gold. The film, already lighter than meringue, is not without its flaws. Both Michael Caine (as Isabel's rakish warlock father, Nigel) and Shirley MacLaine (as an aging diva selected to play "Bewitched" mother Endora) are criminally underused. The two do take the opportunity to grab any scene they're in. Caine is charmingly dissolute and MacLaine gets the best line in the film: "Actors look normal, sometimes better than normal," she tells Isabel at one point. "But deep down, there is no deep down." Carole Shelly does a nice turn as ditsy Aunt Clara and Steve Carell channels Paul Lynne playing Uncle Arthur. Also, Jason Schwartzman is a standout as Jack's sleazy manager. The Ephron sisters have a knack for sparkling dialogue and they use it to great advantage in "Bewitched." Sure, like cotton candy, the film can be a little sticky sweet at times. Ultimately, however, it's an enjoyable summertime confection.
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	13. "earthtimes.org says "Nay.""
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 12:48 PM (PST)
	Bewitched fails to cast a spell on audiences Posted on : 2005-06-24 \| Author : Peter Goodyear News Category : Entertainment Ardent couch potatoes, who remember Elizabeth Montogomery�s nose-twitchingly happy-go-lucky sitcom �Bewitched� and expect the same kind of histrionics from the film of the same name, are in for a disappointment. The film goes behind-the-scenes of the popular sitcom and manages to brew a disaster. Bewitched, starring the bewitchingly beautiful Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, lacks the easygoing charm of its television counterpart. A pretty little witch Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) is determined to live a normal life, asserting, �I want to have days when my hair is affected by the weather.� Actor Jack Wyatt (Ferrell), whose career is on a decline, is to star in a television serial about a �normal� man called Darrin Stephens married to a witch (again, one that wants a �normal� life) called Samantha. So, he goes searching for a newcomer who can�t overshadow him and finds Isabel in a coffee shop. Isabel�s nose (after all, Kidman�s is the most sought after nose in the world!) gets her into the film. Aunt Clara (Carole Shelley), along with Isabel�s daddy (Michael Caine) and Endora (Shirley MacLaine) come with the territory. What follow are mishaps brewed by a bunch of witches and warlocks, determined to contribute their two bits into the making of the sitcom. The film tries its hand at slapstick, and fails miserably. But Jack�s sycophantic agent, Jason Schwartzman, manages to encourage a few laughs. Jack and Isabel are supposed to be falling in love. But the chemistry between Ferrell and Kidman causes no explosion. The film does sport a few funny moments. But not enough to pay for the audience�s ticket cost. Ferrell�s humour is tiresome, and though Kidman easily slips into Samantha�s personality, she fails to carry the rest of the burden gracefully. Screenwriter Nora Ephron, as Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein�s wife might have known the identity of Watergate�s Deep Throat but she knows precious little about writing an effective script. �I got a phone call, about, I don't know, about two years ago from Amy Pascal, who is the head of Columbia Pictures, and she said that she had Nicole Kidman coming in to meet with her about doing a �Bewitched� movie. And could I come up with a plot by 11 am the next morning?� Ephron had said during an interview. Trust us, the fact that the script was hastily thrown together shows. Go only if masochism turns you on.
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	14. "And the word from Florida is:"
	Posted by TV Fanatic on Jun-24-05, 12:49 PM (PST)
	Bewitched � bothered and bewildering It takes more than a twitch of the nose for a classy remake Print E-mail 24 Jun 2005 MOVIE REVIEW by Peter Covino After seeing Nicole Kidman play a witch, you realize just how good Elizabeth Montgomery was in Bewitched. It�s not that this new Bewitched, directed by Nora Ephron (You�ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle), is awful, but it just doesn�t light a candle, bell, book or otherwise to the ABC classic series. Ephron takes an interesting enough twist on the series. This Bewitched isn�t a remake. Will Ferrell plays an actor with a big ego who is down on his luck and reluctantly agrees to do a new TV version of Bewitched. To make sure his �Darrin Stevens� isn�t outshined by Samantha, he finds a complete unknown for the witch�s role. The twist, of course, is that Isabel (Kidman), who is hired to play Samantha, really is a witch who is trying to cut down on her witchy ways. This is all fun and games for a while. There are some laughs in the supermarket when Isabel keeps getting unwanted advice from her father (Michael Caine), who is also a warlock. As Isabel shops, dad�s face keeps popping up on some of America�s favorite food items, such as a box of fish sticks with the Gorton Fisherman or Newman�s Own Popcorn. Back on the set, there are some more chuckles as Samantha/Isabel realizes she doesn�t have much of a role in this new Bewitched, because of her jealous co-star, and uses a little magic to make Samantha the focal point of the show. But this is a love story, first and foremost, and that is also Bewitched�s weakest point. Ferrell and Kidman just don�t work much magic of their own on the screen so it�s hard to get wrapped up in their on again/off again romance. By film�s end, the romance has become tedious at best. Sadder still is Shirley MacLaine�s casting as Endora. MacLaine is always a delight to watch, and her casting as Samantha�s mother-in-law should have been one of Bewitched magical highlights, but she really doesn�t have a whole lot to say or do, so it is mostly a wasted effort. Fans of the old TV show may be pleased with brief appearances by Uncle Arthur and Aunt Clara, two of Samantha�s best loved relatives, but with new actors in the roles, it only makes you realize just how good Paul Lynde and Marion Lorne were in the original series. By the time the curtain falls, and Isabel and Jeff (Ferrell) finally set up house together, Bewitched may just leave you bothered if not bewildered.
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	15. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"
	Posted by Enough already on Jun-24-05, 01:07 PM (PST)
	who the fuck cares?
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	16. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"
	Posted by Larry Brody on Jun-24-05, 01:14 PM (PST)
	I do. I'm rooting for Herbie J. I'm the TV Fanatic this time around. And I love comparing the different reviews to see how the same thing can be construed by different people so many different ways. There's a huge lesson in this for anyone trying to get things before an audience. LYMI,
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	17. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"
	Posted by Herbie J on Jun-24-05, 02:53 PM (PST)
	Thank you, Larry... And not for anything, for some reason, I just had this PSYCHIC vision that the movie is gonna be a HIT!
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	18. "RE: And the word from Florida is:"
	Posted by Rob O'Hannon on Jun-24-05, 03:15 PM (PST)
	Herbie, knowing your passion for "Bewitched" and sharing some of the passion for understated complications of innocence, I hope someone learns a lesson here.
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	19. "Let's have another one from New York!"
	Posted by Happy Jack on Jun-24-05, 06:09 PM (PST)
	HEX ED The most inept director in Hollywood twitches her nose. By Armond White Bewitched Directed by Nora Ephron Every time you see Nicole Kidman's mug on a magazine cover, think: hegemony. This lovely-looking yet only moderately talented woman has won blanket media approval despite no proven box-office popularity and without giving so much as a single credible performance. It's both funny and scary that she also has such an uncanny knack for fake art. From lousy films like To Die For and Moulin Rouge, to the half-bad Eyes Wide Shut; from pretentious, enervating films like The Hours, Dogville and Birth, to the recent, racist The Interpreter�all have made her the darling of gullible critics and the wannabe intellectual set who get revved up with each new marketable release. Kidman does it again with Bewitched, a peculiarly uninspired updating of the 1960s television series into a pop-art meta-film. Treating 60s junk culture as a paradigm of the pop experience is less than clever. It's the smug approach of a lazy hack. Yes, this Bewitched is written and directed by Nora Ephron, perhaps the most inept director in Hollywood today. The original series concerned a centuries-old witch, Samantha (played by Elizabeth Montgomery), marrying a mortal man and struggling to restrain her dark powers�and wacky relatives�in exchange for the joys of normal life. Ephron dares a "complicated" plot in which the old series is revived as a vehicle for a vain, modern actor (Will Ferrell) who unwittingly hires an actual witch, Isabelle (Kidman) for the Samantha role. Ephron scuttles her own gimmick when Isabelle complains about the mindless remake: "This is supposed to be about a real marraiage and real problems, like what color to paint the kitchen." I was reminded of Ephron's 1993 appearance on The Charlie Rose Show, bragging about hiring Sven Nykvist�the cinematic equivalent of what color to paint the kitchen. In Bewitched, label-conscious Ephron has no idea other than to emulate The Truman Show and Ed-TV. (Piran-dull-o.) Those heavily ironic movies pretended to be media-savvy but merely congratulated audiences on their idiotic familiarity (and comfort) with tv-making and showbiz routines. This false sophistication is tv-trite (no surprise, Penny Marshall shares producer credit with Ephron). Bewitched has the same facile Happy Days�style phony sentiment that makes Ron Howard's movies inane. (How does Garry Marshall occasionally advance past it, achieving acceptable sentiment in Overboard, Flamingo Kid, Raising Helen?) Ephron has learned to reprocess romantic comedy (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail), crafting schlock movies that trivialize male-female relations into clich�s supposedly ratified by their cabaret soundtracks. Bewitched repeats that formula yet fails its aim at Hollywood satire because it starts out idolizing Isabelle for her witch's privilege. ("Every woman wants to be a witch," she says. She snaps her fingers for home-and-garden furnishings not unlike the rewards of evil at the end of The Player.) In a sequence working a lawn sprinkler, microwave oven and a light switch, there's ease on top of privilege. So lucking into an insipid tv job and falling in love with her co-star is a bimbo's vision of life. It relates to nothing except, maybe, the fact that like Kidman, Ephron's industry connections have given her undeserved carte blanche. The daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, she married into power and socialized profitably. Thus, you come out of a Nora Ephron romance knowing less about love than when you went in. Similarly, you come out of a Nicole Kidman film with your sensitivity stunted and your taste insulted. (Moulin Rouge is one of the rare films that, by the time it's over, makes you tired of cinema.) Thanks to Ephron, you'd never guess that the tv series had legitimate antecedents�the 1958 James Stewart�Kim Novak Bell, Book and Candle, a comic flip of Vertigo about a witch longing to be human (critic Dennis Delrogh compared it to A.I.); and Rene Clair's 1942 I Married a Witch, a comedy based on social opprobrium and sheer cinematic rhythm. Ephron pilfers the tv series, not bothering with style or thematic coherence�just accidental post-modernism, some contempt for pop taste (as in Nurse Betty) and a reliance on Kidman's sham histrionics. Isabelle isn't smart and conflicted like Samantha; she's an imbecile who just wants to fall in love. Speaking in a Marilyn Monroe dingbat voice, Kidman uses her vacant placidity to contrast Will Ferrell's klutziness. But they're not in sync; after Mr. and Mrs. Smith this is the second screwball catastrophe this month. And here's the hegemonic part: Both Nicky and Nora, celebrity cineastes, consistently make movies that distort and misrepresent human behavior, leaving viewers content with the Hollywood status quo. They operate under the guise of "entertainment" and "art," but their collective films couldn't be more dishonest and unenlightening if they had deliberately conspired to deceive. Kidman and Ephron, the queens of kitsch, are a match from hell.
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