Disappointing ‘Bewitched’ casts terrible spell over audience

In theaters

BEWITCHED, directed by Nora Ephron, written by Ephron and Delia Ephron, 100 minutes, rated PG-13.

Going into the new Nora Ephron film, “Bewitched,” you at least expect a reasonably entertaining twist on the popular ’60s television show on which it’s based. What you get instead is a movie that feels as if it crawled out of George Romero’s “Land of the Dead.”

Somehow, zombies got hold of this movie and laid their undead imaginations all over it. The film is awful, squandering a fine cast in Nicole Kidman, Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine with a lame script that isn’t worth blowing your nose on.

The film is every bit as high concept as its trailer and television ads look, which is part of its problem, but hardly all of it. As written by Ephron and her sister, Delia Ephron, the film has no energy in its writing, no chemistry among its cast, no sense that anything beyond a passing effort went into its production.

It’s one of the worst sort of movies to cash in on our collective memories of a pop-culture favorite that never had the luxury of being bankrolled by a large budget. Instead, the television series became a hit because it had to rely on what matters – good writing, strong characters, solid chemistry.

The folks behind this movie have a different agenda. They’re betting that the hard work and creativity generated by people four decades ago will draw audiences to the box office today. It will, but not without a caveat. Negative word of mouth will sink this baby soon enough.

In the movie, Will Ferrell is Jack Wyatt, a faded movie star who once knew great success. His last movie was such a bomb, it stands as the only film in history to sell no copies on DVD.

Eager to rekindle his career and his diminished celebrity, he does what so many film actors do when their careers take a digger – he goes network, in this case agreeing to star in a television remake of the series “Bewitched.”

Naturally, Jack plays Darrin, the frazzled husband of the closet witch, Samantha, whose twitching nose gets both into trouble so often. But who to play Samantha? What living actress could replace the excellence of Elizabeth Montgomery?

Whoever she is, Jack demands that she be an unknown, somebody who will be content not to steal his limelight. As such, a slew of young women are put through the casting mill, none of whom emerge as a clear winner. And then along comes Isabel (Kidman), who looks and behaves like a young, thinner Marilyn Monroe, with her strawberry blond curls framing a cute face as pale as the moon her airy personality suggests she just visited. Speaking in the sort of exasperated, breathy sigh that sucks the oxygen out of the room (and the movie), Kidman’s Isabel is a real witch who has had it with warlocks.

She wants love in her life, and she wants it in a mixed relationship with a mortal. As she puts it to her philandering father, Nigel (nicely played by Caine in his second strong supporting performance in as many weeks), “I want to feel thwarted! I want a man who loves me and needs me! I want days when my hair is affected by the weather!”

What pours down on her is opportunity and irony, with the short of it coming down to this – Jack stumbles upon Isabel at a bookstore and notices that she sports the same sort of nose twitch that favored Montgomery. That’s good enough for him. When Isabel mistakes his sudden fawning over her for a potential romance, the ice is laid for her own self-deception and disappointment when she agrees to play Samantha.

The problem is that Jack doesn’t care about her romantically – at least not until the movie’s formula instructs him to. It’s his career that he’s in love with, and that’s something that eventually sticks with this witch.

It all proves a bust. When Isabel realizes her mistake, you expect fireworks, more spells than in all of “Harry Potter,” but “Bewitched” holds back.

What we get instead is Kidman huffing and puffing through her frustration, stomping her feet and screwing up her face in a series of controlled temper tantrums, none of which is believable or funny.

Is this really what has become of Samantha? Has the sly feminism of the original series come down to the faux anger expressed in Kidman’s stamped foot? Please. Why not give her some real anger? Why not turn Jack into a toad? Have the Ephrons really had it so easy in male-dominated Hollywood that they can’t transfer their own frustrations into a well of rage for Samantha to dip into?

Making matters worse is Ferrell, who mugs his way through a movie that feels like a mugging – he is more grating and obnoxious here than he’s been in a while, which is saying something for those who saw him in last month’s “Kicking & Screaming.” Also not in the movie’s favor is that MacLaine’s Endora is shucked to the sidelines along with Caine’s Nigel. These two bring the weight and mischief the movie needs, but there isn’t enough of them in it. Instead, they just join the rest of the movie in being an afterthought.

Grade: D

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Weekends in Television, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.