‘The Witches’ review: Nobody asked for this wimpy Roald Dahl movie
The Witches
Running time: 106 minutes. Rated PG (scary images/moments, language and thematic elements.) On HBO Max.
Is Roald Dahl fit for the Age of Snowflakes?
In his books, the British author with a cruel streak depicted schoolchildren being locked in a torture chamber called “the chokey” as punishment (“Matilda”), a kid turning into a blueberry and sent off to be “juiced” (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) and, in “James and the Giant Peach,” a young man is orphaned after his parents are gobbled up by a rhino.
Children lead rocky lives in Dahl’s stories, which is a theme that’s increasingly out of fashion in our cutesy-wutsey world, as evidenced by Robert Zemeckis’ spineless new screen adaptation of “The Witches,” premiering October 22 on HBO Max.
Like Johnny Depp’s 2005 take on “Chocolate Factory,” this is a retread nobody wanted. We already have a perfectly respectable film version of “The Witches,” directed by Nicolas Roeg in 1990, which was well-received for its dark vision of the tale. Anjelica Huston scarred many a childhood with her grotesque Grand High Witch, brought to monstrous life by puppeteer Jim Henson.
Now, the once-great Zemeckis has gone and gussied up the story of a boy trying to stay safe amid a plot by secretive witches (led by Anne Hathaway) to rid the planet of kids by turning them all into mice. To eradicate them. And yet there is no peril, there is zero allure and the effects are anything but special.
The film makes one shrewd change. Its setting is now 1960s Alabama, rather than Britain, and the orphaned boy at the plot’s center is black, with a grandma (Octavia Spencer) who ardently believes in voodoo and witchcraft. That switcheroo is the one compelling reason for the movie’s existence. There are no others.
How Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”) and Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) came to produce this on-screen crib mobile is beyond me. The geniuses must’ve not been paying attention during the Zoom meetings.
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Anne Hathaway, center, as the Grand High Witch in “The Witches”
DANIEL SMITH
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Enterta
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Jahzir Bruno as Hero Boy and Octavia Spencer as Grandma in “The Witches.”
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Enterta
Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch in “The Witches”
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Enterta
Three mice — Bruno, Daisy and Hero Boy — in Warner Bros. Pictures’ fantasy adventure “The Witches.”
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Enterta
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As soon as the boy (Jahzir Bruno) and Grandma leave her small house to seek refuge in a luxurious hotel for the rich, and the witches arrive under the guise of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Zemeckis loses his grip on the pace and suspense. There are ups and downs in the script to be sure — the discovery of the witches, chase scenes, the magic folk’s demise — but Zemeckis gives them no energy so Little Timmy won’t get upset.
Usually technology plays a big role in Zemeckis’ projects: superimposing Tom Hanks realistically into historical footage in “Forrest Gump” and just about all of “Back to the Future,” for instance. The CGI in “The Witches” is bottom of the cauldron. When the kid and his friend Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick) are turned into mice by the coven, along with their pal Daisy (Kristin Chenoweth), the rodents look like a step backward from 1999’s “Stuart Little.”
Spencer, for her part, does the reliably comforting work we expect of her, but her turn in the thriller “Ma” shows how offbeat and magnetic she can be in the right roles. She could play Grandma in a coma.
Still, the grandest disappointment is the Grand High Witch. I dreamed a dream that Hathaway had not been cast in such an oversize part, because having fun always looks like a chore for her, as though she’s Marian the Librarian from “The Music Man.” Her nutso Nordic interpretation of the villainess says “Isn’t this crazy?! Aren’t I funny?!” Answer to both: No.
Her spin on the Euro fashionista sorceress taps into Zemeckis’ camp film “Death Becomes Her,” but it’s in rather less capable hands than those of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Hathaway floats in the air a few times and the sides of her mouth are slit, a la Heath Ledger’s Joker, but even that deformation doesn’t make her frightening or threatening. You’re supposed to believe this woman wants all children dead, and instead, you believe she is sometimes rude to Bergdorf’s employees.
She can’t be too mean — it’ll scare the weakling kids!
