Tag Archives: Witch

I Married a Witch Review

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With a title like this you can expect some fun and shenanigans. It’s a reasonable comedic romance film but at the same time it also could have been better in some respects. At the end of the day part of the fun in marrying a witch is having fun with the magic and trying to lead a normal life at the same time but the film doesn’t get to go into that much because it’s pursuing a different angle.

So the movie starts off with a rather serious scene as Jennifer and Daniel are taken down for the count for being witches. They get sealed in a tree for countless years but also curse the Wallace family so always marry someone that won’t be very nice. As the years go by this spell is still intact and then one day a bolt of lightning destroys the tree. Jennifer and Daniel are free to do whatever they want. Jennifer decides that she wants to ruin Wallace’s life herself by getting him to cheat on his fiancé with her. I’m not totally sure what the end goal here is after the humiliation period is over but maybe that’s enough. She is immortal right now so she could keep on messing with all of his descendants for the rest of time.

The main guy here is a man named Wallace and his life was pretty much figured out. He would marry his fiancé Estelle and live happily ever after. It’s hard to know what he really sees in her since she is portrayed as being rather mean and standoffish from the start. Perhaps there was just nobody else and he didn’t want to stay single forever? If so that’s definitely a shame because settling will often times be worse than going the journey alone. Settling is just the worst possible path there and leaves you in a very unsatisfying place in life. Still, that’s when there is a big fire and he “saves” Jennifer.

Jennifer isn’t used to having a human body after being away for so long and also seems to have lost some common sense initially as she barely even notices the flames and acts like it’s normal to be in a burning building. Still, now is the time to try and ensnare Daniel. To Daniel’s slight credit he resists a bit but I don’t give him a whole lot beyond that. He really should have just told Estelle the score from the start and gone from there. The more distance he puts between himself and Jennifer the safer he is. You can’t worry about rumors as long as you’re doing the right thing and if Estelle is soon to be his wife then she should be able to believe him when he says that Jennifer is following him around.

Where Wallace falters here is when Jennifer talks to him at night and he stays up just talking about life. Keep in mind that she is never able to give him the love formula so he is just falling for her here while he is still engaged. It’s not a good look for the guy at all so even though her feelings were genuine by the end, you can’t root for them to be together. This was all way too fast and feels like a huge rebound. You also have to account for how desperate she was to get him the whole time. He just looks really flaky because of this. The guy is trying to run for governor, he doesn’t have time for any of this.

Meanwhile Jennifer isn’t the best character here as her goal to start with was really petty. Is she really going to spend all of eternity going after the same family? You also have to consider the fact that the descendants have nothing to do with the original crime so it’s not good to punish innocents like that. She’s a full villain from the start even if she isn’t quite as strict as her father. She doesn’t really have a full redemption arc in the sense that I don’t know if she really learned that what she did was wrong. She just likes Wallace now so she won’t be messing with him anymore and is trying for him for real. The crazy thing is from his point of view he can’t see any difference, she is trying for him in the same ways all film, it’s just that in the first half it was to sabotage him while in the second she likes him. Not that it matter much to him though.

Her magic is also pretty good like with the mass hypnosis she has. Then Daniel is able to burn any building to the ground in an instant. Not too shabby, with abilities like that it’s hard to see the witches being stopped by the humans anytime soon. If anything I’m surprised that they were stopped the first time too. You’d think that they could easily dodge any kind of trap and counter right away. For now I’ll say that they just lowered their guard at the wrong time similar to how Daniel was taken down because of that. When you have great powers then you really have to be careful.

Estelle isn’t likable from the start. You still feel bad that Wallace would jump away so quickly when they were just about to get married though. You assume that he already knew about those qualities of her and still wanted to marry her after all. He just ended up going to the rebound and that’s all there was to it. The romance is just not good as a result but the film holds its own thanks to the fun humor here. It is a movie that goes by very quickly and in a way it is nice to see Wallace talking tough at first even though you know that he’s doomed. Initially he thought she was sent by the political rival which actually tracks but of course he ended up being wrong on that one.

Overall, I Married a Witch is the kind of retro, charming film you would expect it to be. The characters aren’t the most likable but they do have good banter the whole time. You may not appreciate the romance but at least the tough talk and posturing before that is good as Wallace is determined not to fall into this. You may know that he will inevitably fail but the journey is still a fun one. I would say a longer period of time of Jennifer trying to convince Wallace that she is a witch would have been fun though. There is so much you can do with those abilities!

Overall 7/10

The Craft Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

When I hear the term “The Witching Hour” I think of Football since they use that term every week on Red Zone when the games are entering the final quarter. I don’t watch a whole lot of movies about witches either so I don’t hear it in this context as much. Well in the end that may be a good thing because this one’s not very good. The characters are all pretty bad for the most part and any scene involving a witch initiation or ceremony tends to drag on quite a bit. This one did not end up being a winner.

So the movie starts with Sarah moving into town and it looks like this place is filled with creeps so she’s going to have a hard time fitting in. One guy seems to like her but it quickly becomes apparent that he’s just using her and does the same to all the newcomers. This drives Sarah into the arms of the 3 witch outcasts at the school. They believe that Sarah is the person needed to complete their quartet so they add her to the initiation and begin their spellcasting. At first things seem harmless enough like little coincidences or love spells but then the 3 girls start getting more and more extreme about using their magic to hurt others and have a good time. Sarah wants out but much like a gang…once you’re in there is no way out. Can Sarah stop these 3 or is it game over?

One thing I’ll give the film props for is that it does cover a lot of ground. Keep in mind that at first Sarah isn’t part of the clique so gradually she joins them, then they all explore their abilities, then they see how these powers are causing damage to people, then they become cool with this, and then they turn evil and go after Sarah. So there’s a whole lot of turnarounds going on here and the film does a reasonable job of giving each section time to breathe. As I mentioned earlier it only really drags on during the witch ceremonies.

We don’t need to see them huddled in a circle chanting to the winds or forming blood pacts. Those were dated when they first came out and you feel like Sarah is really letting them take her down the dark side here without much resistance for a while. They are cool with just stealing books from the local witch expert and while Sarah doesn’t steal anything, just hanging out with these guys is a bad look.

Because if you keep being friends with people who are criminals then to an extent it seems like you are condoning it right? You have to take a firm stand against such things if you really want to make a difference. Sarah just gets in a bit too deep here and it feels like the film wouldn’t have even started if she didn’t hang out with these girls. Now you don’t want to judge them on the reputation of course so it’s good Sarah didn’t buy that but once she saw that they were actually not good people then it was time to cut out.

Sarah isn’t exactly blameless in this whole debacle either though. She casts a love spell on Chris, the guy who messed with her in the intro and apparently it’s basically permanent and can’t be turned off. From there he really goes off the deep end with how obsessive he is over her to the point where he becomes dangerous. She finds this amusing at first and disturbing later on but doesn’t take a very active role in trying to remove the spell.

There is one lady named Lirio who at least knows about witches and can maybe help to an extent but surprisingly she ends up doing nothing in this film. She gets to talk tough and come up with ideas but Sarah runs out of there before they can properly try out the spell. I think Sarah should have stood her ground there since maybe they could have fought off the 3 witches together but I guess we’ll never know from there.

Throughout the film they explain that Sarah is a prodigy in magic so you’re waiting for her big power moment but this isn’t quite Shonen Jump so that doesn’t get to happen. Would have been really cool though. Sarah still does get her clutch moments in the end though and we do get a witch battle by the end. Sarah gets to confront all 3 witches and shows them what true power really is. I appreciated having some action at the end.

The ending of the film is also quite solid with Sarah really laying down the law. It’s not quite sequel bait but you know if there was another film that Sarah would be in good shape now. These other 3 won’t be able to do much against her anymore. So in the end I wasn’t big on Sarah’s character but at least she ends well. Bonnie and Rochelle were played up as if they were going to be sympathetic characters for a while there so I was definitely surprised when they went into full villain mode. It wasn’t a bad decision, the film subverted my expectations in a solid way there. These two didn’t really plan things out very well but at least they were following some kind of path.

Nancy was definitely the main villain of the group in the end though and was certainly the most ambitious. She probably should have tried a more direct way of taking Sarah down before it was too late though. Beating around the bush just put her in a tough spot here and gave time for Sarah to get her bearings. The way the witch powers work here is typically more mental than physical like messing around in the dreams but when push comes to shove you can also use telekinetic abilities. There isn’t much in the way of defense though so if they all ganged up on Sarah and just beat her up there would not have been much of a counter to that.

Overall, The Craft wasn’t really my cup of tea. The witch ceremonies drag on a whole lot and the main characters just aren’t very likable. There’s a super random scene with a guy and his snake that pops out of nowhere but for an instant opens up the door to some interesting plot threads. I thought things were going to go in a different direction with some kind of shady group showing up and the main characters having to team up. The 3 witches actually being evil by the end was unexpected and could have worked but ultimately just didn’t take this title to the next level.

Overall 2/10

Wicked Stepmother Review

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When you have a film about a wicked witch who joins the family you know that things are about to get rocky for the whole household. Unfortunately the witch tends to take everyone down pretty quickly so you don’t expect a lot of likable characters. I would say that’s true for this one as well. By the end of the film most of these characters just don’t stay strong. It’s a film that will give you a good amount of laughs but doesn’t overcome its negatives.

The movie starts with Jenny and Steve finally heading to her father’s home. He had been pretty quiet lately so they want to make sure he’s okay. Well, it turns out that he married an old lady named Miranda and she has completely changed him. Sam loves watching TV all day now and has stopped being a vegetarian so he could go back to meat. The two of them seem pretty content but Jenny doesn’t like this one bit. She wants her father back to his old self but to her dismay even her husband Steve is getting along with her just fine. Making matters worse is that Miranda’s daughter Priscilla has shown up as well and may try to break their marriage apart.

I’ll give the movie this, the opening scene is legitimately filmed as if this was a horror title. You have a lot of suspenseful music the whole time as an inspector walks in a house and we learn that the tenants have vanished. Apparently someone has been going around bumping people off across the country. We then find out that the family was shrunk into tiny dolls and nearly died since they could have easily been stepped on. At this point we learn that Miranda really does have super powers so this doesn’t bode well for the heroes.

Now, this is a comedy film so don’t think that the whole movie is going to be suspenseful though. It’s because this is a comedy film that they can effectively use horror scenes like that. It’s a great amount of contrast. There’s probably a name for this kind of scene but it’s a scene that’s so serious you can’t help but find it funny since you know the film as a whole isn’t a horror.

The scene with Inspector MacIntosh trying to find the culprit among a group of old ladies made for a fun scene as well. These ladies were really tough as they were beating people up and did not act their age. On the whole I would say the film had a lot of its best gags in the first half. You also have a scene where an old lady throws Priscilla out of the phone booth since she had dibs on the next call.

There’s a fun scene where Priscilla pretends that she is melting as well before revealing that the Wizard of Oz made that up and it doesn’t work on witches. MacIntosh actually going to a school for wizards was genius as well. Honestly, if I found out that witches were for real then it wouldn’t be a bad idea since all the things that I thought were hogwash would suddenly have some merit. It’s just a shame that he didn’t actually learn anything but I would say he had to be the best character in the film by far.

So we’re off to a good start but once we get to the actual film that’s where it falters. So with an evil step mother throwing a hex onto Sam you already know she is going to try this again. She messes with Steve as well. Honestly you expect that he’s going to cheat on his wife with her early on in the film since even as an old lady Miranda seemed to be flirting with him. With Priscilla around…well Steve never stood a chance. The guy faltered quicker than the poor guy in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch parody commercial. Steve didn’t seem devoted to Jenny for more than a few minutes.

The film plays up the fanservice angle with Priscilla quite a lot. Outside of the affair with Steve she gets a very random dance where she also seduces the private investigator that Jenny hired. So much for will power right? Priscilla is able to dominate any man that she sees in moments since as a witch she also has absolute hypnosis in addition to her other abilities. The heroes have no shot right from the jump.

Let me quickly explain the Miranda and Priscilla situation. So, they are mother and daughter, however they can’t inhabit the same body so one of them always jumps into a cat. The body seems to change around the soul so they still look different. It’s a little odd and you’d think that with their magical abilities Miranda could just make herself look young anyway though. If not for the issue of needing another actress in the first place the plot would have made more sense to just have said that Miranda was shape shifting.

Actually…that would have made more sense anyway. Just say she is constantly shape shifting to make it easier to seduce everyone. It also removes some of the plot holes from later on. Alas, the film didn’t go that route. Neither Miranda or Priscilla are all that likable or even logical. With the kind of abilities they have, there is no reason for them to even go through with the theatrics. They could have taken Sam’s money at any point. They could probably conjure it up, but if that’s not possible just mind control him to sign something giving her the money. With witch abilities this would be easy.

Well, we’ve established why Steve’s a pretty bad character and Sam’s in the same boat. He is mind controlled by Miranda rather easily. That leaves Jenny but I didn’t like her either. She really doesn’t give Miranda a fair chance. Yes, we know that Miranda is the villain from the opening scene but she has no reason to believe anything negative about the old lady. Yet from the start Jenny is antagonistic towards her and acts rather rude. It’s hard to find any scene where Jenny isn’t being mean to her.

The film has a lot of fun at Jenny’s expense that’s for sure. It’s all just done so drastically that she ends up being royally unlikable. I liked the investigator she hired except for when he suddenly fell for Miranda’s tricks. That was a low moment for him. At least he got the last laugh in the end I suppose.

We do actually get a real climax for the film though so that was pretty hype. There’s an actual magical battle filled with a building blowing up and both sides actually using their abilities. I wasn’t really expecting much action at all so I’ll certainly take this. The ending even leaves room for a sequel which would certainly be interesting. There’s always potential with witches and magical attacks, the film just needs to focus more on that and less on the homewrecking aspect next time.

Overall, Wicked Stepmother is a film that really does have a lot of good jokes but it’s not enough to distract you from the unlikable cast. Seeing Miranda/Priscilla seduce all of these guys without effort can be a bit much. Tone down the romance/affairs/fanservice and focus more on the actual comedy part of the film. More scenes with McIntosh would have done wonders for the film since he was actually on top of things. The scene of him quitting was pretty powerful and seeing more supporting characters would have been nice. There’s a lot of potential for interesting dynamics here but none of them ended up appearing. Maybe a reboot would have better luck.

Overall 4/10

The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold Review

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Leprechauns are usually seen as villainous little guys who want gold at any cost. Typically they will resort to violent means as soon as possible in order to fulfill their ambitions. At the same time then you also have the shoemakers who are always seen as nice in the various stories. Well, this special finally explains that both sides separated a while back. The shoemakers are just a lot nicer.

The short starts with a sailor crash landing on an island from his boat. Then a heavy rain storm appears and the sailor immediately gives up hope that he will ever escape. Fortunately there is a pine cone tree and the hero rips it out of the ground before joining an old Leprechaun for some tea. It turns out that by ripping away the tree the sailor has released an ancient witch who will do everything in her power to steal the gold. Can the sailor make amends or is it all over?

Now that’s the plot on the surface but there is a little nuance here. For starters you have to ask yourself who the true enemy is here. I would argue that the witch isn’t as bad as the Leprechauns. One thing you need to be aware of is that the witch will die if she doesn’t receive a piece of gold before Christmas. Moreover, she can’t steal it, she must convince a leprechaun to give it to her in order for the spell to be broken. The Leprechauns are rich beyond belief so surely they could have given her at least one piece right? The fact that they didn’t shows how petty they are. They kept treating it as an all or nothing issue when that was simply not the case.

The Witch has some reasonable plans to trick the Leprechauns in the meanwhile. Putting a serum into the Leprechaun’s tea was pretty clever and that plan almost worked. Then The witch correctly assumed that the sailor wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and moved on to manipulating him. It just gave more reason to remind you that the sailor was certainly not on point.

While I was on team witch I suppose the main Leprechaun was a solid character. He was quick on the draw and would have defeated the sailor if he had a better weapon. His disagreement with the wife was certainly not one of his better moments though. Again, he could have given some gold rather than having to live apart for the next few decades. That part of the plot is actually a little tragic if you think about it. The fact that the lead acknowledges the existence of Gold Fever just proves the point even more. On the other side of the spectrum though, the wife shouldn’t even suggest getting rid of all the gold. Cmon, that’s not very practical.

As far as the animation goes, stop motion still isn’t the best style out there. It’s around LEGO level with that style bring a little more polished at this point. Still, the animation could be worse (Water colors) and as this special is quite short I wouldn’t call it a real issue. The constant crying effect for the Witch was certainly something. If anything the style makes you feel bad for the characters whenever they are sad as they tend to shake a lot.

Overall, This was a fun little special. I do think the movie could have done more to show us why the witch was the antagonist if we were really supposed to root for the Leprechauns. Perhaps it was intentional though in which case the film did a good job. If you haven’t seen this film yet and don’t mind the art style then I would recommend it. It’s not every day that you get to watch a film about Leprechauns after all.

Overall 6/10