The Witches: A Kooky, Cartoony Remake
Backed by Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro (who also shared a hand in penning the screenplay), Robert Zemeckis returns with The Witches, a cartoony riff on the nightmare-inducing 1990 Nicolas Roeg film and the Roald Dahl novel of the same name. While you’d expect more from the talent involved, Zemeckis and company manage to pull together a somewhat enjoyable rendition of Dahl’s story that nods to its superior predecessor while attempting to break new ground.
In late 1967, a young orphaned boy (Jahzir Bruno) goes to live with his loving grandma in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. As the boy and his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) encounter some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, she wisely whisks him away to a seaside resort. Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world's Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe — under cover — to carry out her nefarious plans.
Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 film, The Witches, starring Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, left an indelible scar upon many children’s adolescence. The practical effects that covered its coven of witches — namely, Huston’s Grand High Witch — were so jarring and freakish that they’ve seared themselves into the brains of numerous children forever (perhaps warping them for the better?). Although it maintained a certain degree of lightness, Roeg’s film operated within a bizarre, grotesque darkness that children’s films seldom venture, which makes it pretty special in our book. The handcrafted feel to its witch and mouse effects imbued the film with a certain sense of charm, which is hardly matched by the computer effects that make up much of modern cinema’s offerings — Zemeckis’ remake being no exception.
Combining the tonal absurdity and over-the-top fun of 1992’s Death Becomes Her with the CGI-heavy pageantry of films like Beowulf and The Polar Express, Zemeckis’ The Witches is a somewhat inspired mixed bag of goofy family-friendly fun. It plays like a cross between the original and Ratatouille, with Zemeckis leaning into the unapologetically scary imagery of its source material, while also churning the experience into a rollercoaster ride of occasionally exhilarating mouse POV action sequences. It’s easily the most cartoony Zemeckis has been since his Toontown days with Who Framed Roger Rabbit and his most joyously exaggerated since Death Becomes Her. Although The Witches never manages to reach the glorious heights of the aforementioned, it doesn’t succumb to the kind of mediocrity that has plagued Zemeckis’ late career (although there are points in which is certainly tries). At the very least, it’s a definite step up from 2018’s jumbled mess, Welcome To Marwen.
Neither the Roeg or Zemeckis version (and the Roald Dahl one, for that matter) are examples of great writing; however, there’s a perceivable clunkiness to the remake. Namely, its terrible ending and the way in which Zemeckis frames the story through voiceover are the two most glaring aspects. Despite some of its relative missteps, Zemeckis, along with fellow screenwriters Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, also make several welcome changes. For starters, they’ve made it more inclusive (the Roeg version being predominantly white) by transposing its location from England to late-60s Alabama and making the protagonist a young, African American boy. While the change of scenery gives the story some much needed diversity, it’s not worked in a way that adds new layers to what’s already there — it does make the loss of the young boy’s parents more viscerally felt, however.
There are minor changes (like the swapping of the original’s story of a witch trapping a girl in a painting for a scene in which a little black girl is laughably transformed into a chicken), but the largest and most noteworthy changes happen in the film’s third act. There’s one shift Zemeckis makes to the film’s penultimate climax that brings it to a pretty fun and satisfying showdown, which doesn’t exist in Roeg’s original. Zemeckis also eschews Roeg’s shoehorned happy ending in favor of the ending of Dahl’s novel. While there’s an amusing quality to Zemeckis’ chosen ending, its execution makes it fairly hard to stomach (there’s a montage that’s cheesy in a very eye-rolling way). Zemeckis’ use of CGI is mostly a miss here, and it deflates the story a bit with its many baffling choices, like animating the witches in instances where practical effects could do the trick or including CGI animals when they aren’t necessary or could have been done with a live animal. While the computer-generated effects allow certain liberties that practical effects don’t oft permit, there’s an absence of charm to their usage — which won’t bother youngsters, the film’s target audience, like it will for most adults.
Although it’s nearly impossible to eclipse Anjelica Huston’s performance, Anne Hathaway gives it her all and dials in a fun, over-the-top performance, which is reminiscent of Cruella de Vil with clear nods to Huston. She plays directly into the film’s outlandish, cartoon-like quality, and whenever she’s on screen, she tends to steal the show. Jahzir Bruno also impresses as an on screen talent and voice actor, with Octavia Spencer and Stanley Tucci providing quality support. The one cast member that’s doesn’t quite fit is Chris Rock, whose bookended voiceovers standout as one of the narratives weaker points. Overall, it doesn’t hold a candle to Roeg’s film — although we’re biased — but Zemeckis carves out enough separation so as to not entirely trample on our nostalgia, and his efforts should bewitch an entirely new generation with its CGI nightmare fuel.
Recommendation: If looking from something kooky and family-friendly spooky, The Witches remake will fit the bill; although, it’s nowhere near as memorable or nightmare-inducing as the original.
Rating: 3 bars of potioned chocolate outta 5.
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