Bewitched

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's funny, easily the funniest and least self-conscious movie that director Nora Ephron has made.

Premiere Peter Debruge

As endearing as Ferrell and Kidman are on their own, there's just no chemistry between them onscreen.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's one of those movies where you smile and laugh and are reasonably entertained, but you get no sense of a mighty enterprise sweeping you along with its comedic force. There is not a movie here. Just scenes in search of one.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Puts a fun, frothy spin on the 1960s TV show before sinking back into the mundane.

Newsweek David Ansen

As long as it stays focused on showbiz, Bewitched is light, frothy fun. But Ephron insists on turning Bewitched into a love story, and that's when the fun starts to seep out of the movie.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Sadly, it's a disappointment. Nicole Kidman could hardly be more enchanting in the lead, but the script is one of writer-director Nora Ephron's weakest.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Bewitched does have a few laughs, thanks to Ferrell's antics. And some of the wittiest contemporary comedians are on board, notably "The Office's" Steve Carell and "The Daily Show's" Stephen Colbert, but they are underused.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

When Ephron gives Ferrell and Kidman a musical number that's supposed to be sweet and uplifting, the movie feels downright creepy.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

One thing Kidman is not is a clown. She thinks fizzy and dizzy and klutzy are funny. She is mistaken. To be a clown requires a kind of witchcraft.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A romantic comedy that's pleasant, if not exactly spellbinding.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The result is clever, and the narrative twistings keep you on your toes, but there's just one hitch: it ain't funny.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Despite the labors of leads Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, there's no screen magic being made here.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

An uninspired misfire of a TV-series knockoff that, despite its great cast and smart filmmakers, never manages to scare up much magic.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

With no help from the dialogue, Kidman doesn't have a clue how to make clueless interesting. Not for lack of trying. Her efforts, which often consist of channelling Elizabeth Montgomery by way of Marilyn Monroe, are painful but insistent.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Kidman will have the last laugh; not even Ephron, with her dumb flying house of a movie, can crush her magic.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Ephron sisters, sophisticates entrusted with a simple TV situation comedy, lose the magic of the com as they mess with the sit.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with some grace and confidence.

Time Richard Schickel

Bewitched means to be a civilized entertainment, which occasionally it is. But the gentility of this antique sitcom cannot be recaptured at this late date.

Empire Simon Braund

It’s neither funny nor charming enough, proving a disappointing treatment of fabulous source material.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The film's screenwriters conjured up a very clever gimmick when they decided to revamp a favorite 60's television show. Too bad they forgot that a gimmick is no substitute for a screenplay, never mind a real movie.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Isn't a remake, really. It's a "reimagining," which is a sparkly word for what happens to a beloved TV hit of yesteryear when it's cannibalized by committee.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

This isn’t Nicole Kidman’s first dalliance with witchcraft, and it is one of Bewitched’s unfortunate achievements that it actually makes one pine for Kidman’s 1998 dud, "Practical Magic." That witch at least had some sass; this cardigan-clad witch, alas, is an altogether more benign being, and by "benign" I mean boring.

Variety Brian Lowry

Nora Ephron's attempt to reconceive the standard TV-to-bigscreen adaptation goes bizarrely haywire here, spinning out of control like a runaway broomstick.

Slate David Edelstein

Using R.E.M.'s impassioned "Everybody Hurts"--written by Michael Stipe after the suicide of Kurt Cobain--to underscore shots of Kidman and Ferrell feeling blue about their inability to pair off is an aesthetic crime. The Ephrons should be fined and forced to do a few hundred hours of community service.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Falls victim to an overly tricky rethinking of the way familiar TV shows are transformed into movies.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Forget chemistry: There's no biology to the star casting.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Bewitched presents a phony and cynical look at how Hollywood might make or remake a television show. It's as grating, laughless, and narcissistic (though, to its credit, not as cruel) as that new Lisa Kudrow show-within-a-show-within-a-show, "The Comeback."

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The result, at best, is a sweet failure.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A terrible, terrible movie. Its creators have a swell idea at the core, a wonderful leading lady, and several stalwart comic players in support, and they make of all of that a picture with the wit of an armpit fart, the verve of a boxwood shrub, and the appeal of a long night in an ER waiting room.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

Kidman is stuck in this pomo movie about the making of a TV-show remake. It’s "Being John Malkovich for Morons."

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Regardless of the cute little hats and clam-diggers she wears, it's impossible to believe Kidman as a breathless ingenue; that relentless drive and steely Kidmanesque determination keep jutting through the cotton in flinty, sharp-edged shards.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It sinks so deep and fast, you don't even see bubbles on the surface.

LA Weekly Steven Mikulan

The film's funny for 15 minutes as it skewers Hollywood and prowls block after block of familiar L.A. scenery.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The motion picture version of Bewitched is a travesty of monumental proportions that belongs in the "What the hell were they thinking?" category.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Un-magical, unfunny and un-romantic alleged comedy.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Why is the movie such a mess? Will Ferrell plays a washed-up actor who's supposed to be a hopeless mess, but even his character makes little sense. Is it all supposed to be postmodern? No, it's post-postmortem, the dead spirit of a dearly departed show.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Bewitched piles miscalculation upon miscalculation, beginning by casting the iron-willed Kidman, one of film's gutsiest and most fearless actresses, as a regressive pre-feminist dumb-blonde doormat, a sort of mildly retarded amalgam of Marilyn Monroe, Renée Zellweger, and Meg Ryan.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

To spend even 10 minutes in the movie's universe is to experience the Sartrean nausea of an utterly hollow head and heart.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

This hackneyed, hapless and utterly useless redo of an overrated 1960s sitcom is excruciating to sit through for a dozen reasons.