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Bewitched
EMAILPRINTColumbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 89 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Fantasy
Written by:
Nora Ephron
Delia Ephron
Adam McKay
Directed by: Nora Ephron
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 24, 2005
DVD: October 25, 2005
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some language, including sex and drug references, and partial nudity
Starring Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, Jason Schwartzman, Kristin Chenoweth, Heather Burns, and Jim Turner
Isabel (Kidman), a witch who just wants to lead a normal life, is cast to star opposite Jack Wyatt (Ferrell) in the remake of the beloved 1960's situation comedy Bewitched.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Lucky Numbers Mixed Nuts You've Got Mail
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Official TV Show Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
It's funny, easily the funniest and least self-conscious movie that director Nora Ephron has made.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
As endearing as Ferrell and Kidman are on their own, there's just no chemistry between them onscreen.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Puts a fun, frothy spin on the 1960s TV show before sinking back into the mundane.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A romantic comedy that's pleasant, if not exactly spellbinding.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Despite the labors of leads Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, there's no screen magic being made here.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Empire Simon Braund
It’s neither funny nor charming enough, proving a disappointing treatment of fabulous source material.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Falls victim to an overly tricky rethinking of the way familiar TV shows are transformed into movies.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Forget chemistry: There's no biology to the star casting.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It sinks so deep and fast, you don't even see bubbles on the surface.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 89 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Stinky Stunky gave it a6:
Good storyline. Shakey acting.
Tinamarie D. gave it a4:
It had no plot. I wish they would of made it more like the old bewitched. Nicole was really cute in it but her talents were wasted in that movie.
Joey K. gave it a7:
It was amusing and entertaining. It had some funny parts, and the whole movie was cute. It was unexpectedly weird, though. Also, it's far from a remake. It's more a coincidental story about the TV series rather than a remake of it, which may surprise anyone who isn't expecting it, myself included. Not the best movie, but certainly a pleasure to watch.
Wally S. gave it a6:
A tremendous disappointment, Kidman's talent doesn't belong here and Ferrell should sue. Its charming, yes, but it has no substance whatsoever, the plot stinks all the way, and we never receive what we were waiting for through the entire projection.
D.L. Brunner gave it a5:
Not nearly as bad as I expected.
Susan M gave it an8:
Charming and silly. No it probably won't win any awards, but that's not what it's all about. I thought it was sweet, and Nicole Kidman did a fabulous job, she's a great actress. Will Ferrell is very good also.
Greg T. gave it a1:
Oh My God!! When you look up "lame" in the dictionary, you see a trailer for this movie. Horrendous unfunny slapstick.
