There is no naughty child who couldn’t be tamed by the opening chapters of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Dahl offers a scenario so chilling that even the most wandering mind was reached; witches are real, they are amongst us, and they prey on children. And the scene-setter, in which a little boy is magically trapped in a picture, growing old before his parents’ desperate eyes, is probably more disturbing than a thousand horror films.
Playing like Suspiria for pre-schoolers, Robert Zemekis’s fresh adaptation, following on from Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 version, unwisely dumps such little scenes as extraneous baggage. The story is moved from eighties Britain to 1968 Alabama, but without taking much period detail other than Grandma (Octavia Spencer) and her predilection for pop music. A young boy is orphaned and moves in with her, and befriends a pet mouse, a friendship which takes on another dimension when they holiday in an elaborate hotel, only to find that it’s being used for a meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The meeting, however, is merely a cover for the meeting of a grand coven of witches, led by the Grand High Witch herself, played by Anne Hathaway. The hotel manager, Mr Springer (Stanley Tucci) is unaware of their nefarious activities, leaving Grandma and her team with the task of stopping the witches from promotion their own special brand of cruelty to children.
Zemekis was a CGI pioneer via Death Becomes Her, The Frighteners and Contact, and he knows how to create depth and scale with effects. So this 2020 version, co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has plenty to offer, and a few moments are striking, particularly when the Grand High Witch recognises Grandma at the dining table with a withering look. Other scenes, such as the mice escaping via knitting on a hotel balcony, are well conceived, and kids will probably dig the off-kilter feel of the mayhem as the witches get their come-uppance. Other elements jar; Chris Rock’s narration for one, too breathless and unconsidered to match the elegant narrative twists. And while Dahl’s story was specifically rooted in political satire, namely Margaret Thatcher’s annual conferences in large Brighton seafront hotels, The Witches 2020 strips away the references and replaces them with nothing in particular, making the story seem, well, just odd.
I’d be curious to know what today’s kids make of Grandma’s inability to restore the kids to human form after they get transformed into mice; in Dahl’s dark work of orphans and magic, it makes sense, but the failure to return things to a status quo feels unsatisfying here. Hathaway does well, as does Spencer, but the comedy shrinks as the scale of the action increases, and this slick version somehow lacks the magic of Dahl’s prose, or Quentin Blake’s beloved illustrations.
I haven’t seen the other one, or read the book, but I think I’d give this a go on a ironing afternoon, Hathaway looks like she had a blast, and I’d turn all children into mice if possible, so yeah, I’d give it a go.
A bit steep right now for £16, but hopefully that’ll come down…are you saying you’re on the side of the witches? Films like this give them a bad press…
Sayin nutin.
You should read the book. Absolutely delicious!
I’ll bung it on my list!
And being a kids book, it won’t weigh you down, depress you or take a week to wade through.
See, so many positives before you even start! 😀
My cup runneth over!
I was quite a fan of both the orginal movie, and the book. But when I saw the trailer for this one a few weeks ago, my first thought was…why?
Reading your review it seems the movie isn’t a total loss at least, but still doesn’t bring the magic as you so eloquently put it. I wasn’t really planning on watching this one to be honest. Maybe when it eventually makes it’s way to Netflix I might give it a go…but we’ll see.
It’s not awful, and some of the moments really play. The effects solve some of the issues of the 1990 version, but the flavour is much blander than before…worth a look on a big ironing day…
🤔🤔 Big Ironing day will be my Condorman marathon where I watch the film in ten different languages…..🤔🤔
I’ll be there! Will bring your parents if they’ve got nothing else on, we’re all up for the Turkish remix of Woody’s adventure!
🤔🤔 Cool!! The extended director’s cut of course!😂😂😂
Have you tried playing at one-hundreth of the normal speed? 24 hour Condorman !
No…I haven’t…but I did play it backwards once at one hundreth of normal speed…that was pretty scare😱😱😘
There’s no bad way to watch a lazer-firing speenboat!
No I guess that’s true! 😂😂😂
Awwwww, I saw this and had high hopes for a minute. I rather disliked the earlier movie and absolutely adored the book.
How political were most of Dahl’s childrens books? I know he was a big anti-semite, but that is because another blogger I follow wrote about it. I’d never have picked it up from his kids books. You mention Thatcher and sea-side meetings, which did go right over my head when I read the book. Do his other books have little things like that?
Good question, and I think the answer is no. I think UK readers would get the analogy, but what’s a bummer here is that there’s no second level gained by the 68 US setting. I think Dahl was quite an old-school reactionary from the company he kept (Ian Fleming for one) but in general reading politics into his texts isn’t the norm…
This sort of caught my eye because of Hathaway, but does she do the whole movie in that accent? It’s awful.
Yes, she’s meant to have been buried under a Norwegian tundra or something, the references from the book that are carried over are a bit confusing. She has fun with the accent, but it’s quite hard to follow at times…