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Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 16, 2025.

Faye Dunaway finds an extremely powerful magic ball, and teams up with a drunken reject from the cast of Dynasty and the local school IT teacher to use magic to make the gardener horny for her. That’s actually the plot.

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

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Genuinely funny and sweet at times, goofy lots of the time, dull in parts, but not a dud and not at all deserving of the bad reputation. It’s a good film which runs dry in the desert, no pun intended, but picks itself up again for the splendidly silly and funny ending pay-off. See it, enjoy it.

This review may contain spoilers.

The film begins with the most literal and over the top slideshow, narrated by the most distractingly overblown and exaggerated voiceover from Chris Rock. It’s so distracting it’s painful to listen to.

Moving forward we begin with the introduction to our main character a young (unnamed) orphan boy who goes to live with his grandmother. In the original story and film there’s a deeply magical introduction to the witches and grandmother’s backstory. This version skips by it with a story with no atmosphere whatsoever, and a pretty ridiculous CG transformation of a girl, which the audience don’t care about or invest in. It’s just brushed aside as if it doesn’t really matter.  The hallmarks of how to spot a witch, which is so crucial to the story in the book and original film, are totally ignored - some of the witches even have pointed shoes. The filmmaker’s idea of “atmosphere” is 1950s b-movie style lightning flashes while Octavia Spencer does her best to rise above the material.

The first encounter with a witch also has no real tension or jeopardy.  Then we move to the location for the rest of the main story - a hotel in which our hero encounters a meeting of all the witches in America, posing as a charity to prevent cruelty to children.  Anne Hathaway appears with them all at once, coupled with an accent that is similarly bizarre and inconsistent. That’s nothing compared to the voice she does when she is alone with the other witches - it’s like she’s channeling Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films.

Hathaway then introduces her plan to kill all the children. It’s described in such a rush one could be forgiven for thinking that she’s in a hurry to be somewhere else. And who can blame her? I’d want to rush out of this mess of a film too.

What’s worse is that this film fails to be even remotely scary. It’s just ugly, inconsistent and dumb.  The reliance on CG is extremely poor. On two occasions the Grand High Witch’s arms extend to reach out and grab at someone - but the rate in which it happens is so slow anyone would be able to get away. It makes you wonder what the point is.  There’s also a CG cat, and even the beach by the hotel is so poorly done it’s obviously not really there. 

And throughout we have to put up with Chris Rock’s awful narration - the performance, as already noted, is bad. But the fact that we see it’s a sunny day and the narration then says “it was a sunny day” makes it all the more unnecessary and stupid.  Another misstep in the vocal casting is Kristin Chenoweth who is supposed to be the voice of an orphan girl - yet sounds more like a tired and mouthy drunk woman who has spent too long propping up the local bar. Bizarre isn’t even adequate to describe that.

I could go on, but it’s not going to be positive. Stick to Roeg’s original film - that’s not perfect either, but it has wonderful atmosphere, performances and none of the idiotic choices put into this version of the story. There was no reason to transplant the story to Alabama in the 60s, no reason to add in an additional girl mouse, and it’s not even brave enough to be truly scary or inventive visually. What a wasted opportunity.

One of the greatest films ever made. No exaggeration.

All the human guest stars know their place is secondary to a singing frog, a joke telling bear, a starlet pig and a chicken-iring whatever; and they play their roles with sincerity and believability.  Watch out for Steve Martin’s obnoxious waiter, and the entire sequence with Mel Brook’s evil scientist are particular highlights.

Charles Durning’s Doc Hopper is never once played as anything but straight, and he is clearly not only enjoying the role but makes the threat of his character so believable and never stupid. Austin Pendleton as his suffering lackey and sometime moral com is also splendid.

A series of good running jokes that even young viewers can enjoy, even if their too young to recognise the cameos, and one of the best film soundtracks ever written - every song is an instant classic, but there’s obviously no beating the opening Rainbow Connection - makes The Muppet Movie a winner.

Finally, all these elements all combine to service a marvellous and intelligent story which never talks down to the viewer. This is not a kid’s film. This is a film for everyone with a heart.

Watched on Sunday January 20, 2019.

Watched on Sunday May 6, 2018.

• Perfect Days
• Secrets & Lies
• La Jetée
• Local Hero
• Lifeboat
• Bicycle Thieves
• Wings of Desire
• The Last Picture Show
• Black Narcissus
• It Always Rains on Sunday

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films I watched that came out in 2020

• Soul
• The Wolf of Snow Hollow
• David Byrne's American Utopia
• Onward