What Nora Ephron's BEWITCHED (2005) Teaches Us About Filmmaking

[TMC]

While it didn't do well with critics and is mostly forgotten today, Nora Ephron's 2005 BEWITCHED remake/reboot/reimagining starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, actually has quite a lot to say about filmmaking and the film industry. So what better way to explore this concept than by comparing it to STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER?

[OH Nuts!]

Originally Posted by TMC

I didn’t like the remake at all, which is rare for me, as I usually love movie covers of a show.

She should stick to writing. Just my opinion of course.

[Dick York was Darrin]

If I'm not mistaken, I believe Nora Efron is dead.

[RetroGuy2000]

Looking it up, I see she wrote Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie and Julia. She had some serious writerly mojo going on before her untimely passing. I don't think Bewitched was good, but she had other well-respected films.

[Willbo]

I can remember looking forward to this movie. We took our kids to see it. That was a mistake. The movie as a whole was very disappointing. Jim Carey should have been Darrin. Nicole Kidman was ok. Most of the other characters seemed to be miscast.

[Dick York was Darrin]

I'm kind of on a Bewitched thing this month, so I just ordered this on ebay for about $4.00. Seems like it has gotten awful reviews. I'll watch it just out of curiosity.

[OH Nuts!]

Originally Posted by Dick York was Darrin

I'm kind of on a Bewitched thing this month, so I just ordered this on ebay for about $4.00. Seems like it has gotten awful reviews. I'll watch it just out of curiosity.

I found it disappointing—UNLIKE the first five seasons of the show—which rocked.

[Dick York was Darrin]

Originally Posted by OH Nuts!

I found it disappointed—UNLIKE the first five seasons of the show—which rocked.

Just watched this. Agreed. Horrible. Nora Ephron was clearly trying to remake something else, but not Bewitched.

[tcr1701]

Originally Posted by Dick York was Darrin

Just watched this. Agreed. Horrible. Nora Ephron was clearly trying to remake something else, but not Bewitched.

This was the first and only movie I almost walked out on it was so bad. Luckily I had a free ticket that was included with one of the TV series boxed sets at the time. Even with the premise of the film Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman were totally miscast. Even Shirley MacLaine was unwatchable in this.

The smug line from Ferrell (who is just plain creepy in this) that "they replaced Dick York and no one even noticed" was quite the insult and completely wrong.

[Dick York was Darrin]

Originally Posted by tcr1701

This was the first and only movie I almost walked out on it was so bad. Luckily I had a free ticket that was included with one of the TV series boxed sets at the time. Even with the premise of the film Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman were totally miscast. Even Shirley MacLaine was unwatchable in this.

The smug line from Ferrell (who is just plain creepy in this) that "they replaced Dick York and no one even noticed" was quite the insult and completely wrong.

Yes, that line was complete bs. I'd bet a million dollars that at some point, Nora Ephron pitched the movie to Elizabeth Montgomery, and had conversations with her, and that's where she got that non-sense from.

And it is nonsense. Especially since Elizabeth Montgomery kept saying it over and over, as if to convince herself that Dick York had nothing to do with the success of Bewitched.

[tcr1701]

Originally Posted by Dick York was Darrin

Yes, that line was complete bs. I'd bet a million dollars that at some point, Nora Ephron pitched the movie to Elizabeth Montgomery, and had conversations with her, and that's where she got that non-sense from.

And it is nonsense. Especially since Elizabeth Montgomery kept saying it over and over, as if to convince herself that Dick York had nothing to do with the success of Bewitched.

That Bewitched script was written well after Montgomery's death so she had no input into it. I think, like most of the movie, Ephron didn't understand Bewitched. Also, Ferrell brought in his own writer to adjust the script to suit him - I would bet that line came from him and his writer.

[Dick York was Darrin]

Originally Posted by tcr1701

That Bewitched script was written well after Montgomery's death so she had no input into it. I think, like most of the movie, Ephron didn't understand Bewitched. Also, Ferrell brought in his own writer to adjust the script to suit him - I would bet that line came from him and his writer.

Yes, the script was written well after Montgomery died, but that doesn't mean that Montgomery didn't have conversations with Nora Ephron in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when Nora Ephron was big after When Harry Met Sally. Some of these projects take decades to come together, and like I said, I'm willing to be a lot of money that that reference can be directly tied to Elizabeth Montgomery.

[OH Nuts!]

Originally Posted by Dick York was Darrin

Just watched this. Agreed. Horrible. Nora Ephron was clearly trying to remake something else, but not Bewitched.

I have a bad habit of watching any movie, even an AWFUL one to the end. This one felt like it lasted 15 hours.

[TMC]

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildering Case File #196 Bewitched (2005)

This marks the fifth and final entry in Nora Ephron month here at Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. When YOU, the Happy Place reader/patron chose Nora Ephron for one of 12 theme months in the epic boondoggle that is 2020: The Year YOU Control Nathan Rabin I was not overjoyed because I was not an Ephron fan.

Two years and one theme month later I am pleased to report that that is not the case anymore. I’ve gone from being a hater to a lover, from “not a fan” to an out and out Ephron Stan. Oh sure, I’m still not terribly impressed by her romantic comedies but I have come to appreciate even Ephron’s most maligned motion pictures.

I dug Lucky Numbers and Mixed Nuts, was amused by Cookie and utterly charmed by This is My Life and the Julia Child half of Julie & Julia.

I was dreading the mind-numbingly meta 2005 adaptation of Bewitched because I fuzzily remember flat out hating it the first time around.

I must be getting soft in my old age because now I have a hard time imagining anyone legitimately hating this silly little movie with a white-hot burning passion. Does Bewitched work? Not particularly! Is it a great or even good movie? Not really! Yet Bewitched is such a silly, slight, affable motion picture that it seems utterly undeserving of vitriolic contempt.

There are many things wrong with Bewitched. For starters, it is roughly five thousand times more convoluted than it needs to be.

Instead of a faithful adaptation of the beloved 1960s sitcom about a sexy, smart witch and her boob of a husband Ephron instead created a post-modern meditation on the show that revolves around Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman), a genuine witch who wants to leave witchcraft behind and live a normal life.

She picks the worst possible place to attempt normality in Los Angeles. In the City of Angels she’s discovered by Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell), a narcissistic man-child of a movie star reduced to starring in a television remake of Bewitched.

The painfully insecure superstar is worried about being upstaged in a project he already thinks is beneath him so he insists on being paired with a complete unknown.

The show unknowingly ends up hiring a genuine witch for the role in Isabel, who is not an actress, or even a human being, and seems to have only a vague sense of what acting and being human even entail.

Yet Isabel agrees to do the show all the same because she’s looking for a shambling, helpless train wreck of a man to save with her kindness and unconditional devotion and Jack fits that description.

The path of true love winds through a predictable gauntlet of sitcom complications and contrivances, however. Isabel overhears part of a conversation between Jack and his ******* agent Ritchie (Jason Schwartzman) about the cynical, opportunistic reasons for her casting and makes wrong assumptions based on that misunderstanding.

Then an older witch casts a spell on the cocky actor that causes him to fall madly in love with Isabel and the rest of the world simultaneously. This frustrates the fresh-faced practitioner of black magic because she wants the dolt to fall in love with for the right reasons, because she’s the most beautiful, radiant creature in existence and adores him for some reason, and not due to witchcraft.

The Ephrons write themselves into such a corner here that the third act contains both an only semi-ironic montage sequence set to R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts” AND a Deus ex machina in the form of Steve Carrell doing a mostly passable Paul Lynde impression as Uncle Arthur, the wisecracking wisenheimer Lynde played on the original show.

In this world Bewitched is a television show about people who do not exist. Accordingly, Uncle Arthur is a figure of fantasy several times removed from reality but also the catalyst who makes Jack realize how much he loves and needs Isabel. If that sounds absurdly, unnecessarily complicated, that’s because it is but it also reflects the weirdly bifurcated nature of a movie that’s at once bizarrely reverent towards its inspiration and wholly unfaithful at the same time.

Bewitched is very much a product of its time. When the movie was released to scathing reviews and underwhelming box-office in 2005 its star was probably the hottest cinematic funnyman in the world thanks to Old School, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Elf.

Everybody wanted Ferrell and his manic, improvisational magic so when he agreed to appear in Bewitched it became a Will Ferrell movie by default. Ephron clearly encouraged Ferrell to make the role and the movie his own, to toss aside the script she co-wrote with sister Delia and improvise to his heart’s content.

Ferrell has his moments here, like an extended riff where his crazed egotist demands three trailers, a make-up team in matching jumpsuits, a leopard with a diamond-studded collar and a two-story cake delivered to the set every Wednesday to commemorate it being Cake Day as conditions for doing Bewitched.

It’s an amusing bit, bordering on funny but it does not belong in a glossy romantic comedy about a beautiful witch who wants more than anything to be unremarkable.

Bewitched suffers from an identity crisis. It’s divided against itself in unmistakably gendered ways. Bewitched doesn’t work as a slick romantic comedy about a preternaturally beautiful witch finding love in the unlikeliest of places because it’s at least partially a bro comedy about a towering, self-absorbed jackass who couldn’t be further from a conventional romantic leading man.

Bewitched similarly does not succeed as a post-Anchorman, Judd Apatow/Adam McKay-style bro comedy because it’s also a slick romantic comedy about a preternaturally beautiful witch finding love in the unlikeliest of places.

The film’s two moods—boyish, broad and wacky when it comes to Jack and his personal and professional travails and swooning, romantic and daffy when dealing with Isabel’s exploration of what it means to be human—do not mesh at all.

Ferrell and Kidman don’t have particularly strong chemistry and Ferrell is too monomaniacally focused on getting laughs to make for a good romantic leading man. Yet I nevertheless found plenty to like about Bewitched this time around.

Some of the inside baseball show-business satire is inspired, like an animated opening for the new Bewitched that reflects its new focus all too clearly by highlighting Jack almost exclusively or Jack’s agent observing that his last movie was such a disaster that it’s the first movie in history to sell zero DVDs.

I similarly found myself digging Kidman’s performance. She’s sweet and dreamy and appropriately ethereal, an out of this world beauty with poignantly banal desires to be just like everyone else.

I wouldn’t exactly say I liked Bewitched but I didn’t dislike it either. I fear that I am becoming a non-ironic version of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s On Cinema, where a big part of the meta joke is that they like every movie and bring to the world of movie reviewing a normie’s uncritical, unconditional love of Hollywood product rather than a critic’s cold analytic eye.

[Chocolate Moose]

for what it was worth, i don't remember hating it. yes, ephron is gone now