Bewitched

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It has little, if anything, to do with the quality of that for which we feel nostalgic. Instead, it seems to stem from a desire to return to some point in time when we were happier — or at least have some pleasant association with. The problem is that nostalgia tends to elevate the mediocre to a level of regard it can’t support — and it makes it strangely sacrosanct in the bargain. I remember when the original Bewitched TV show debuted. I thought it was pretty swell — it was also three days before my tenth birthday. Whatever illusions I harbored about it — and I watched it faithfully for a long time — were killed through overexposure when it went into syndication and played every afternoon five days a week. Flash forward to 2005 and this movie version — or riff on the show — appears to almost total scorn and a sound critical drubbing. Why? Because it was that bad? No. Because it wasn’t the TV show. This was predictable. It almost always happens with movies of this sort if only because they mess with the nostalgia associated with the TV series. Sometimes this reaches astounding heights — consider when The Honeymooners (also 2005) came out and I encountered an outraged woman who was shocked to find that it didn’t star Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (nevermind they were both quite dead by the time).

I palmed reviewing it off on someone else not because of what might have been “done to” the show (nothing had been done to the show, it was still there), but because I’d been burned out on the original for years and years. Much like the show, the film is at best…cute. That it doesn’t try to be the show is admirable. It’s more a kind of Valentine to the show and our collective nostalgia for it. The problem — at least the biggest one — is ironically built into the story. It’s about an ego-driven actor who wants to turn the series into one that focuses on Darrin and makes him the star. His efforts are predictably disastrous. Ms. Ephron and her co-writer sister, Delia, fall prey to exactly the same thing by becoming more and more a vehicle for the broad mugging of Will Ferrell. Except in those scenes where he’s held in check, Ferrell seems to be working in a different movie than the rest of the cast. However, when he’s off screen or under control, the film has its pleasures — however minor.

The Hendersonville Film Society will show Bewitched Sunday, June 28, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.