My Review of The Witches (2020)

 

Written by  Robert Zemeckis And Kenya Barris And Guillermo Del Toro

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

The Boy: "Witches are real and they hate children."

In 1990 we got our first big screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches and I won't lie, that movie freaked me out as a child. Seeing Anjelica Huston in her true fork as the Grand High Witch was pretty terrifying and while I greatly like Anne Hathaway as an actor, the question is: does her version hood up just as well?

The answer I'm afraid to admit would be not really. She certainly gives it a great go and ups the theatricality of the children hating character but it's not quite on the level as to what came before and it's one of a few problems that the movie has in itself.

If the 1990 movie deviated away from certain aspects of the original book, then this updated version takes the action of the United Kingdom altogether and puts it in a firm Southern setting where the young protagonist of the piece (Jahzir Kadeem) goes to live with his grandmother, played by Octavia Spencer, following the death of his parents.

There's a lot of time spent in trying to get the grief stricken child to open up to his grandmother but when he does, she gives him a pet mouse called Daisy (later revealed to be a girl named Mary, voiced by Kristin Chenowith). Also, upon an encounter with a strange woman in the store, the boy also learns that witches are real and his grandmother knows how to work voodoo as well.

Going to a posh hotel in the Gulf of Mexico ran by a rather ineffectual Mr Stringer (Stanley Tucci), the boy and his grandmother then get involved in stopping the Grand High Witch and her large coven from turning the children of the world into mice. Of course, the boy and his new friend, Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick) are already victims of the spell and unlike the previous live action version, it's a spell that's not reversed by the end of it.

In some ways, keeping that plot point from the original book along with a detailed look into the boy and his grandmother's mission to take out witches worldwide by warning children about them is definitely a massive strength of the movie. That and the believable rapport between Octavia Spencer and Jahzir Kadeem with Chris Rock voicing the elder version of the mouse.

Other than that, everything else somewhat falls apart. The CGI is genuinely terrible during certain scenes, there's a few times when Hathaway hams it up too much for the story, Bruno's parents are terribly written and the first half an hour drags a bit, even if it's setting up a hinted past between the grandmother and the Grand High Witch.

- The Grand High Witch turned the grandmother's friend, Alice into a chicken during an early flashback in the movie.

- The Grand High Witch certainly had more of a wardrobe here along with different wigs. The elongated smile did genuinely look creepy.

-  Due to its timing release wise, this became more of a streaming movie than a theatrical ones, though some cinemas did get it.

- Chronology: 1968 Alabama but by the end of the movie, it was around 1979.

The Witches definitely doesn't live up to the excellence of the previous live action but it's not a total loss of a movie. The main cat do the best they can, the location work definitely works better than the CGI in parts and there's something delightful in seeing the Grand High Witch being eaten by her own cat. Saying that though, this was a reboot we could've done without.

Rating: 6 out of 10