Article contributed by Daniel A
It’s been thirty years since we’ve last seen Roald Dahl’s children’s novel, The Witches, adapted to film. As is the major question with all remakes, what does this contemporary version have to offer to audiences?
An older version of the film’s protagonist (Chris Rock) narrates the story, recounting his childhood run in with the titular witches. Rock’s recent turn in FX’s Fargo proves his ability as a serious actor, yet anyone who has seen the sitcom Everybody Hates Chris will be instantly reminded of that, as Rock also narrates the story of his younger self. It sets the tone for the rest of the film and this version of The Witches is more a comedy for young children than anything else.
As a boy (played by Jahzir Kadeem Bruno), he loses his young parents in a car accident and is taken in by his grandmother (Octavia Spencer). After he is approached by a strange woman at the supermarket, his grandmother tells him all about witches. She fears they are in danger and they leave immediately for Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel, unaware that the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) and her coven are convening for their annual meeting at the same hotel.
Hathaway, with an accent that defies explanation and identification, is the highlight of the film. She is having fun, and while most parts of the film struggle to find a happy medium between its nightmarish concept and its accessibility to both children and adults, she is the only part that works. Her exchanges with the hotel manager, Mr. Stringer (Stanley Tucci), are the funniest parts of the film.
The Witches also suffers from, as often remakes do, over familiarity. The plot is exactly the same as its predecessor, with any minor story changes, like the Grandmother trying to use the witches potion to create her own cure for its effects, detrimental to the film’s pacing.
The decision to have the boy and his grandmother be African American, and set the film in Alabama 1968, is unnecessary. It’s an intriguing concept, but it is not at all explored. The Grandmother tells her grandson that witches pray on ‘the poor, the overlooked, the kids they think nobody’s gonna make a fuss about if they go missing’, and that’s about it, but since it’s a children’s film, nothing can really be done with it.
Its visual effects, too, pale in comparison as there isn’t even an attempt to recreate the classic monstrous look of the witches from the 1990 version. Instead they are just bald, with elongated smiles and sharp teeth. The once puppeted cat and mice are now just computer animations only the littlest of children will find appealing.
The film surprisingly uses the original ending of Roald Dahl’s book that was considered too dark for the 1990 film. But where that ending would have fit the very dark tone of the film, it comes across as a very offbeat joke here, in a film mostly concerned with laughs.
