HOCUS POCUS
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1993 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
Touchstone Pictures, an offshoot of the Walt Disney Studios, was established partly to showcase films of a slightly more adult nature. But its latest release, a corny, slapstick affair called HOCUS POCUS, is strictly for kids.
Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker play the Sanderson sisters, three Salem witches circa 1693. So broad are their performances that HOCUS POCUS often feels like a high school theatrical production--and not a particularly good one at that.
Midler's Winifred looks like a cross between a hamster and Margaret Thatcher on steroids. Sporting diabolical costumes and devilish hairdos, this Miss M is anything but divine. Bette's scenery chewing histrionics include an obligatory musical number, "I Put a Spell on You," although the Screamin' Jay Hawkins' original seemed more integral to the plot in Jim Jarmusch's STRANGER THAN PARADISE.
Najimy gets less mileage out of her role as Mary Sanderson. Much as you would expect from an actress whose previous performance was that of a fat nun in SISTER ACT, Najimy plays a big broad with a big nose. Mary's a little simple, but delights in that fact that she can smell children a mile away. Food for thought indeed.
But Parker steals the show as Sarah, a squeaky femme fatale with long, blond, Rapunzel-like hair and blackly made-up eyes. Her alluring, boy-crazy bimbo is a treat for this or any other Halloween.
Three hundred years after the sisters are hanged for witchcraft, three young trick-or-treaters sneak into the deserted Sanderson domicile and unwittingly bring our ghoulish gals back to life. This they achieve by lighting the black flame candle--the deal is the spirits will return if the candle is lit by a virgin on Halloween night. And boy do the producers milk *that* joke for all its worth!
As it so happens, Winnie, Mary and Sarah can stay young forever by eating the town's children, or turn into dust when the sun rises, whichever comes first. With the help of a talking cat, Binx, the three kids try to undo their egregious error and condemn these Sisters of Satan to eternal damnation once and for all.
Omri Katz plays the young hero Max Dennison, Thora Birch is his annoying kid sister Dani, and teen heartthrob Vinessa Shaw is the one with the "yobbos." (Remember. HOCUS POCUS is a family film; this is easily the dirtiest word spoken in the entire movie). They're a tried-and-true bunch of semi-likable, smart-alecky movie kids whose parents tend to act younger than they do.
Predictably, that oft-used plot device--strange-looking outsiders can pass virtually unnoticed on Halloween night--comes in quite handy here. It is best utilized in a brief scene with Don Yesso (from TV's FRANK'S PLACE). He plays a bus driver who "picks up" the three hags and gets some of the film's biggest chuckles in the process.
There are bubbling cauldrons and a magical spell book and a zombie that keeps losing its head and cinematic prestidigitations and overacting like crazy but it's all in good, clean, laugh-out-loud fun.
You're more likely to laugh out loud if you're under thirteen, however. THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK it ain't.
Director Kenny Ortega has a lot riding on this film, as his only other directorial effort was the disastrous movie musical, NEWSIES. HOCUS POCUS was reputed to have cost $28 million--high for a Disney production--and it makes sense when you realize the cat stand-ins alone (all eight of them) earned $200 a day! What *doesn't* make sense is why they are releasing this holiday film now, at the height of the summer.
In any case, the money doesn't really show on the screen. The effects are downright cheesy, especially the talking cat, whose computer-animated facial expressions look worse than if they'd spread peanut butter on its lips. Everything looks cheap and obvious, from the suspended-on-wires flying broomstick sequences to the electricity-from-the-fingers that Winifred uses to keep the kids in place. The set design is elaborate and fanciful, giving the haunted Sanderson house the look and feel of something out of HANSEL AND GRETEL, but the whole fabricated fantasy wobbles precariously between high-tech and low-cost.
"We're talking about three ancient hags versus the twentieth century!" exclaims Max exasperatedly at one point during the movie. "How bad can it be?"
Someone had to ask... .
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