What’s It About
Reimagining Roald Dahl’s beloved story for a modern audience, Robert Zemeckis’s visually innovative film tells the darkly humorous and heartwarming tale of a young orphaned boy who, in late 1967, goes to live with his loving Grandma in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. As the boy and his grandmother encounter some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, she wisely whisks him away to a seaside resort. Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world’s Grand High Witch has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe—undercover—to carry out her nefarious plans.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
As a family film, The Witches tries too hard, and in the end, it only seems to cater to a very small demographic. There is so much wrong with this movie. From the period in time it chooses as a beginning, to the way the witches are portrayed, someone should have said something in the pre-production phase. The Witches, for whatever reason, begins in 1967, Alabama. Some might look at it as a random beginning, but why choose a time with a deep-rooted, mainly negative emotional meaning to Black people? Was I supposed to enjoy this as a family film, or was there some sort of dramatic subliminal message at work? Nevertheless, I dealt with it. But a feeling I thought would only last about ten minutes was there until the end of the movie. So was the story any good? No. The Grandmother, played by Octavia Spencer, told the story all about Witches. How they can hide in plain sight and how much they hate children – especially children. They hate the way they look, the way they sound, and because Witches have noses that can rival a Bloodhound, they can’t stand the way kids smell. The Grandmother told this to her grandson to warn him and help grieve his parents’ loss. So when Grandmother finds out a witch approached her grandson, she decides they need to stay in a ritzy hotel until the Witch has left town. While at the hotel, (surprise, surprise) the annual Witches convention was there disguised as The International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. From there, the movie gets more painful to watch. The Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) turns the grandson into a mouse and threatens to turn every child in the world into mice. The rest of the film consists of the grandson, two other children turned into mice, and the Grandmother trying to stop the Grand High Witches’ plan. In my opinion, The Witches could have been a hundred percent better if it were not for the oppressive time period. Unfortunately, it would still be a sub-par film with a story only a little kid could like.
OUR RATING – AN OFFENSIVE 4