Saturday, December 12, 2020

Film Review - The Witches (2020)

The Witches is based off the book by Roald Dahl and is directed by Robert Zemeckis and co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron is a producer on the film as well, the story concerns a young boy (Jazhir Bruno) who goes to live with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) and she warns him about evil Witches who hate children and now the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) has devised a plan to rid the world of children by turning them into mice.

 

The Witches is a fun movie, Mr Zemeckis can still deliver somewhat of a fun experience somewhat and the film has a lot of his technical trademarks on it most notably a great musical score by Mr Alan Silvestri who did the legendary score for his Back to the Future and crafted that great Avengers theme which I got a real joy out of hearing in a big cinema screen plus there are some fun sequences with the mice that definitely have that influence of Mr Cuaron as well.

 

One big negative I have to mention is Ms Anne Hathaway, someone I have been a big fan of for a long time but here she goes so far over the top it becomes groaning to listen to after a while and I got sick of hearing that voice, now to be fair Mr Zemeckis can get great comedic performances out of his actors the criminally underrated Death Becomes Her is a prime example of this but this one really didn’t work.

 

Also the more I’ve come to think on the film I have found myself wondering what a Del Toro directed and Cuaron produced version of this movie would’ve looked like as I have pondered that Del Toro’s extraordinary imagination would’ve been a great fit for Dahl’s writing as a movie perhaps it would have pushed more of the technical wizardry, more of that childlike horror feel and more of that visual wonder like in Pacific Rim where I just sat there with my mouth wide open smiling from ear to ear.

 

Or indeed the Zemeckis that made Death Becomes Her that was a dark comedy with great comedic performances that didn’t feel like a bombastic cartoon either way as fun as this movie is I can’t help but feel that either of those would have been better than the movie we got which despite Hathaway’s cartoonish voice is a fun ride that I did enjoy, 3 out of 5.

 

No comments: