The Witches (2020)

The Witches (2020)

3/10

Starring

Anne Hathaway

Octavia Spencer

Stanley Tucci

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

The first movie had an ending that was not perfect in any sense, but it was a happy one that is. Here they decided to switch it up a little and give us a not so perfect ending, but then make it up to feel like all things worked out well for good. I am like, if you cannot make it better do not even try to change it then.

This is a crappy movie, boring and just lacking in any form of excitement.

Streaming on HBO Max is this remake of the 1990 film of the same name, The Witches. The 1990 film has a cult following with high praises laid before Anjelica Huston for her role as Grand High Witch. Well, Anne Hathaway has been asked to step into those shoes. The movie caught my eye because of Hathaway (great actor) and the director is the amazing Robert Zemeckis, plus co-writer with Zemeckis is Guilliermo del Toro. Come on why will I not want to see this? Oh, did I fail to mention the movie is also narrated by Chris Rock. Sadly, the movie was a dud.

The movie starts a little different from the first movie. In Alabama we are introduced to the young man Charlie, who is an orphan and living with his grandmother. After an incident in the shopping center, his grandmother tells him about witches and how they hate children. She tells him that they need to go away for a while because of his incident at the shopping center.

They go to a hotel, which it so happens is where the Grand High Witch was holding a conference telling the other witches about her plan to turn all the children to mice.

Charlie get caught by the Grand High Witch while he was hiding and listening to their plan and he was turned to a mice. Now he must locate his grandmother and stop the witches from fulfilling their plan.

So they changed the story a lot, taking it from a British setting in the 1990 version to an all black cast setting in Alabama. The boy actor was not particularly good which just made things worse off in comparison to the movie it is trying to remake.

My major challenge with this film was the whole changes. The changes were suppose to give this movie life, by adding more depth, characters and ideas, but in the end what they added were more reasons to be bored.

Then Hathaway did not live up to the performance laid down by Anjelica Huston. Her character had an accent and meandered way too much in her conversations.

I saw the whole change to the witches appearances were more of special effects show off than the needed childish fun that came with the first movie.