Dona: I would agree with that. I found the film so insulting and I am a huge fan of the TV series Bewitched. It wasn't funny, it wasn't anything.
Ava: Well let's pin the blame on the responsible: Nora Ephron. She directed it, she's a producer of the film and a co-writer. It is a piece of garbage and it is so bad that she should honestly never be allowed to direct again.
Jim: Those are strong words! C.I., do you agree?
C.I.: If I were in charge of all green lighting, she'd never get one. That film was masturbation, it wasn't art. I'll explain but someone, Dona, you were a fan, describe the TV show.
Dona: Betwitched was a sitcom that started in the sixties and ran through the seventies. It starred Elizabeth Montgomery as the witch Samantha. She married mortal Darren -- played by two different actors over the course of the series. He is bothered by her powers -- except when he needs her to use them -- and they have two children, Tabitha and Adam. Her family can get on his nerves and his family, chiefly his mother, is a real pain in the ass.
C.I.: It was a very popular ABC sitcom, original episodes from 1964 to 1972, and it featured strong women. Samantha and her mother Endora being two examples. The film ditches Endora and instead presents you with Samantha and her father. Yes, it's "Daddy Issues" time yet again. And at 38, did anyone want to see Nicole Kidman playing such a woman? No and it was an insult to fans of the TV show but the biggest problem was the concept which is why I'd never greenlight anything with Ephron attached. You do not take a beloved TV show that has millions and millions of fans and do a movie like she did. The 'joke' is that Nicole plays a witch in a TV show and Will Ferrell plays her husband Darren. They're remaking Bewitched. Shirley MacLaine plays Endora on the remake but she's not Endora. Can you follow that garbage? Your average audience isn't going to enjoy that mental jerk off. And as they watch Nicole and Will play actors acting out scenes in a TV show, they're only reminded that Nicole and Will are actors. The little stunt robs the audience of the ability to invest in the characters. It was mental masturbation and a sure sign that someone's rested on too much praise and fancied herself above the audience she needs to continue her career. It was insulting and offensive and the film didn't make back it's filming budget in the US.
Ty: Well let me jump in on Will Ferrell. I'll leave it to others to decide whether or not he's funny but I don't know anyone who would argue he's great looking. I know few who would call him good looking. This is who we're supposed to want Nicole to end up with? And that's before you factor in that his character is a selfish and self-obsessed prick. There are many plain women you might set Will up with but Nicole Kidman is one of the most beautiful women in films and if we're supposed to be in the midst of a romantic fantasy, she needs a Prince Charming, not a toad who stays a toad.
Stan: I felt that way too, honestly. I didn't want her to be with him. And I couldn't believe how long it took for the film to get even a little interesting. We had to be at the thirty minute mark when the Who song started pumping and Kidman's finally using some real magic. It was so slow and it was so stupid and it was so badly written, so, so badly written. The jokes weren't funny and, like C.I. pointed out, the "Daddy Issues." Nicole was too old to being played Daddy's Little Girl wanting to stand on her own -- if Daddy will go along with it. It was embarrassing. My goodness, how immature is Nora Ephron that she saw that as a view of women worth sharing, worth putting up on the screen. I agree that it was insulting to the audience and I think she has a real hatred for the audience if this is the sort of crap she wants to serve up. I really loved the show, Bewitched, the TV show. I didn't expect to love the movie just because I loved the show so much. But I like Nicole and I thought it would have to be funny and I could take whatever differences there were. I was wrong. It was awful.
Dona: Because of the advertisement for the film, I honestly thought Shirley MacLaine was playing Nicole's mother. She's not. She plays an actress who plays Endora on the TV show the characters film. I was so surprised at how little Shirley was given to do. It was bad enough that there wasn't an actual Endora, but to use Shirley so little was disgusting. Especially when every time you blinked there was the always annoying Michael Caine yet again.
Stan: I've written a lot about Shirley MacLaine at my site -- and no links because I know we're rushing to get this done -- but she's a really solid actress. And she provided the only life in the film. But she'd only get a second here and a second there. Between what was done to her character and what was done to Nicole's, I really had a hard time believing two women wrote the script. The film catered to Will Ferrell and some people might like that but I avoid his films. I have no interest in them. They're the dumbest things since Ernest Goes To Camp or whatever. I'm not interested in that low grade humor. But that's what Nora Ephron served up.
Jess: I think a key point made was by C.I. about the daddy issues Ephron saddled the character with. When you start doing that, you're screwing with the formula and by making the 38-year-old Kidman play an airhead to begin with, you've already watered down the character. Samantha didn't pop out of a bottle, she didn't call her husband "master." There are some shows Ephron could have pulled this revisionary crap with but Bewitched isn't one of them. And I'm with Stan, I can go my entire life without having to endure another Will Ferrell film. In a small supporting role, he can almost hold attention. In a full blown leading role, it's like he's attacking you from the screen.
Dona: I agree with that -- with Jess and Stan's opinions. But I also agree with Ty that this was just not any kind of a romantic fantasy. Will Ferrell isn't my idea of dream material. I don't think he's that funny and I find him physically repulsive. Not unattractive, physically repulsive. It says a great deal to me about Nora Ephron's state of mind that for her bad film, she felt a woman had to be beyond beautiful but a man could be butt ugly and still qualify as a leading man. Talk about endorsing a double standard. Endorsing, hell, she spread her legs and welcomed it inside her.
Ava: I'm laughing so hard at that. If I wasn't taking notes right now, I'd go over and hug Dona for that. Wonderfully said.
Jim: Stan saw it this week, Ava and C.I. had already seen it and Dona dragged me to see it when it was at the movies. But Ty and Jess watched it last week for the first time when I said Stan was going to bring the topic over here. And the thing had such a stink to it, the film did, that they really didn't want to watch it. Is it the worst TV show turned into a film?
Stan: I never saw The Dukes of Hazard movie but I have a hard time believing it could be worse than this. A lot of people trash, for example, the movie of The Beverly Hillbillies. But that actually has some genuinely funny moments with Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin. There was no genuinely funny moment in Bewitched -- which is billed as a comedy. Shirley MacLaine would have an entrance or a line that would set you up for a good laugh but she'd be immediately gone and you never got it. And I really think when you're training the camera on Michael Caine nonstop to catch him doing the same thing he's done for over forty years now, you're pathetic. MacLaine is a funny actress and she was doing bits that she's never done before. She wasn't recycling Steel Magnolias or any other film she's been in. She had a new character and it was an interesting one. Except to director and co-writer Nora Ephron. I don't know if she'll make another movie or not but I can tell you I will never pay to see a film she makes again.
Ava: Her new film, due out this summer, is about Julia Child and stars Meryl Streep.
Stan: A good actress but I won't see the film.
Jim: What would it take to make you pay money to see a Nora Ephron film?
Stan: Meg Ryan. But I really get the feeling that she hates Meg Ryan so I don't expect them to work again.
Jess: That's interesting. Why do you say that?
Stan: Her only film success comes with Meg Ryan. Meg onscreen is really how Nora sees herself. But the fact that she can't make a hit without Meg is something she resents. At first, she tried to make films where she wrote the part Meg played and had other women play those parts, like in Michael, but that didn't work. So then she writes these characters, like the one Nicole played, which are so fake because she's refusing to write about herself. She's really a very limited talent. If you look at Sally or any of the roles Meg played -- and Meg did a great job in those roles -- you'll see they are Nora on the page of any of her old essays. And Meg became her onscreen and she wants to kill off Meg. She's a lousy writer. Her only strength comes from writing about herself. Julia Child isn't her. The film might do well because Meryl Steep's in it but I don't think it'll be a hit.
Jim: And you won't pay to see it?
Stan: I will never again waste my money on a Nora Ephron film. Bewitched exhibited real hatred of the people who pay to see her movies.
Jim: Dona, are your feelings as extreme as Stan's?
Dona: I don't know that his feelings are "extreme." But I share them. I didn't realize it until he was talking about Meg Ryan, but I agree with everything he said about that. And short of Meg in the lead role, I won't see another film by Ephron. That's pay money for it, watch it on cable, you name it. Life is too short and she really has some serious I'm-so-above-my-audience airs as evidenced by Bewitched.
Jim: And someone shoots back, "But there are so few women directors! How can you not support her?"
Dona: I shoot back that there was nothing about Bewitched that was positive about or for women. Give me a Penny Marshall film, I'll pay to see it. Give me Streisand, I'll pay to see it. Nora? Her pattern was a Meg film, a bomb, a Meg film, a bomb. And now there are no Meg films. Meg lifted the material to a higher place. We saw a lot of other actresses try to play that same character -- good actresses -- and fail. So the reality is that Meg made Nora. Without Meg, there's no Nora worth hearing from. I hope the Julia Child film bombs.
Ava: Which is highly likely. They last worked together on Heartburn which bombed. But, to sum it up, Jim, Dona's under no obligation to support woman director Nora Ephron when Ephron's Bewitched did nothing to support women.
Jess: And I think what you're hearing from Dona and Ava specifically is a real revulsion because Nora Ephron has no excuse for serving up backlash stereotypes of women on the screen. She's supposed to be smarter than that.
Stan: I'm curious, Jim, what was your opinion of the film?
Jim: As I remember it, Dona can correct me if this is wrong, I laughed at the first scene Will had. He's taking a meeting with his agent and the writers for the Bewitched TV show. And I laughed. He was doing his usual babble which is funny. But then came a scene almost immediately after where he spies Nicole for the first time and he's dancing around with the camera repeatedly finding him. It wasn't funny. And his only shtick is the babble. He's not a physical comedian. So it surprised me that the overly verbose Nora Ephron chose to have the two meet basically via a series of exchanged looks. That was my first indication that the film was going to be bad. And it really did suck. But I believe I said, correct me if I'm wrong, Dona, "This movie is going to suck." At the point where Will was eyeing Nicole.
Dona: Yes, you did. And what's interesting about that sequence is we do get babble. From a minor character serving coffee. And Jim's correct that babble is all Will Ferrell can offer so when you put him in the important scene -- the one that's supposed to make you believe he and Nicole have chemistry -- you don't take away his only strength.
Ty: If I could make one quick comment before we close, I don't think Nora Ephron's got a visual style. There were things about Sleepless that indicated she did but then came Michael and, worse, You've Got Mail where she appeared to believe that her job as director was just to get the actors to say their lines. Her shots are standard fare in everything since Sleepless in Seattle and by the time You've Got Mail rolls around, they're standard and schmaltzy.
Jim: Interesting. And we are going to have to close. We had another entertainment topic but we'll save it for another time. This is a rush transcript. If there's an illustration, Betty's oldest son did it.
