PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
If I didn't know it was a remake, I'd swear Bedazzled was modeled after two of the annual `Treehouse of Horror' episodes of The Simpsons. One involved Homer getting four wishes from a magical Moroccan monkey's paw, and in the other Homer sold his soul to the Devil Flanders for a donut.
But Bedazzled IS a remake. The original, a 1967 film written by and starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, was about a hapless fry cook that unsuccessfully tried to off himself because he couldn't work up the nerve to ask out a pretty waitress. In pops the Devil, who offers the loser seven wishes, each of which revolve around the seven deadly sins (Raquel Welch played Lust).
The new version isn't quite as dark. The main character isn't suicidal, and the deadly sins are completely omitted. But the biggest change to the original is the fact that the Devil is played by a scantily clad supermodel. The result is a light, entertaining film that is probably the best family comedy to be released in several months.
After the clever opening credits, where anonymous citizens are literally labeled `bad tipper,' `horny,' and `cheats on taxes,' we are introduced to Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser, The Mummy), a customer service rep for a San Francisco-based computer company called Synedyne. Elliot is essentially a grown-up version of Jason Biggs' Paul Tannek from Loser. He's despised by the co-workers he thinks are his friends and longs to be with a Synedyne employee named Allison (Frances O'Connor, Mansfield Park), who is way out of Elliot's league.
One evening in a bar, Elliot's `friends' talk him into approaching Allison, who, of course, blows him off. Exasperated, Elliot says that he would do anything to win her affection, at which point the Devil (Estee Lauder scab Elizabeth Hurley, Edtv) appears and offers to make all of his dreams come true via seven wishes. Elliot is skeptical, but he eventually begins making wishes, all of which turn out horribly wrong.
Admirably, the trailers for Bedazzled show only Elliot's first wish, in which he requests to be rich and powerful, but becomes a Columbian drug lord. In each of the wish sequences, which incorporate Elliot's co-workers Wizard of Oz-style, Fraser gets to play a completely different character, some of which don't resemble the actor at all. His performance is just as good as Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor films.
The beauty of the film becomes watching Elliot wish for the wrong thing over and over again, while everybody knows that he should have asked to be a sexually ambiguous magician, because that's the only sure-fire way to land hot babes. Elliot never even figures out how to drag out his wishes to ask for more things, unlike Homer, who covered himself by being very specific.
`I wish for a turkey sandwich on rye bread with lettuce and mustard. And – AND I don't want any zombie turkeys, I don't want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don't want any other weird surprises – you got it?'
Bedazzled was directed by Harold Ramis (Analyze This), who co-adapted the script with Larry Gelbart (Tootsie) and Peter Tolan (Analyze This). The film's ending is very flat and doesn't show enough of Elliot's character growth. Hurley is at her least annoying and her least dressed (the former probably has some effect on the latter). O'Connor is good, but looks disturbingly like Mariah Carey in several scenes.
1:32 – PG-13 for sex-related humor, adult language and some drug content
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