The Witches | Little White Lies

The Witch­es

27 Oct 2020 / Released: 28 Oct 2020

A group of women in vibrant, colourful, and patterned vintage fashion attire, centred around a woman wearing a large brimmed hat.
A group of women in vibrant, colourful, and patterned vintage fashion attire, centred around a woman wearing a large brimmed hat.
2

Anticipation.

Another The Witches adaptation but still no The Twits?

3

Enjoyment.

It’s not all good but it is good fun.

2

In Retrospect.

Kinda hard to concentrate when Anne Hathaway’s feet keep flipping me off.

Roald Dahl’s time­less children’s sto­ry is reimag­ined as a sac­cha­rine caper – but at least the cast are hav­ing fun.

We are all pro­tec­tive of the sto­ries we loved as chil­dren. Like many peo­ple my age, Roald Dahl’s The Witch­es’ is of dou­ble impor­tance to me, both as a trea­sured book and a beloved, albeit some­what trau­ma­tis­ing, film. Nico­las Roeg’s adap­ta­tion from 1990 was where my love of hor­ror began; its sin­is­ter spe­cial effects could only be viewed with the lights on. The chal­lenge of adapt­ing such a cher­ished prop­er­ty for a new gen­er­a­tion is there­fore an unen­vi­able one – and Robert Zemeck­is does not entire­ly rise to the occasion.

This ver­sion of The Witch­es relo­cates the sto­ry from Eng­land to America’s Deep South while keep­ing the main plot points. A young orphaned boy (Jahzir Bruno) goes to live with his grand­moth­er (Octavia Spencer), but when a local witch takes an inter­est in him they escape to a lux­u­ry hotel unaware that the witch­es’ annu­al con­fer­ence is being held there.

Despite retain­ing many of the trag­ic details from the book, Zemeck­is’ film has been pol­ished smooth and paint­ed bright. Gone are the sisyphean night­mares for unlucky chil­dren, replaced with a sin­gle instance of a girl being trans­for­ma­tion into a chick­en. Gone is Anjel­i­ca Huston’s meta­mor­pho­sis to a demon­ic mon­stros­i­ty – an image which seared itself into a generation’s brains. Gone is much of the dark­ness, some­thing that Dahl always felt chil­dren had an under­es­ti­mat­ed propen­si­ty for.

A man in a suit shouting at a woman and a child in traditional Asian attire in a lavish interior setting.

This is an alto­geth­er more whole­some caper, and many new ele­ments work well. Octavia Spencer is won­der­ful as Grand­ma, trans­formed from a hard-liv­ing, chain-smok­ing Nor­we­gian octo­ge­nar­i­an to a God-fear­ing fiftysome­thing full of warmth and folksy wis­dom. The styling for her char­ac­ter is worth the rental price alone; her bright flo­ral prints, stiff hair and pletho­ra of acces­sories seem to be coor­di­nat­ed to match the fur­ni­ture and wall­pa­per of every room she enters.

Anne Hath­away as the Grand High Witch is almost as suc­cess­ful. She gives it her absolute all, chew­ing the scenery with a vague trans-Euro­pean accent that often changes mid-sen­tence. Even when tasked with dire vil­lain­ous mono­logues like, You think you are so clever break­ing into my room with a stolen key when every­one knows they keep a spare key at the front desk,” she rolls her Rs and fur­rows her brow with such aplomb it’s hard not be impressed.

Try as she might, how­ev­er, hers is not a Grand High Witch for the ages. Her appear­ance is com­i­cal­ly crap; a wide mouth that looks like a Snapchat fil­ter and feet with a long, sin­gle mid­dle toe that seems to be per­pet­u­al­ly flip­ping the bird. Else­where, Stan­ley Tucci’s role is so thank­less as to sug­gest he’s doing some­one a favour, while Chris Rock’s shouty nar­ra­tion dis­tracts more than it enhances. Worst of all are the CGI mice which have a pla­s­ticky, weight­less qual­i­ty that would nor­mal­ly be reserved for a far low­er bud­get film than this (though the voice per­for­mances are adorable).

It’s not hard to imag­ine that Dahl would have hat­ed this sac­cha­rine retelling. But The Witch­es 2020 casts a spell that is hard to entire­ly resist, pri­mar­i­ly because every­one on screen seems to be hav­ing such a good time. It may not have stolen the original’s place in my heart but for my young daugh­ter this was a thrilling intro­duc­tion to Dahl’s world and a fun Hal­loween treat.

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