director
Harold
Ramis
screenwriters
Larry Gelbart
Harold Ramis
Peter Tolan
based on
a screenplay by
Peter Cook
Dudley Moore
producers
Trevor Albert
Harold Ramis
cinematographer
Bill Pope
music
David Newman
editor
Craig Herring
cast
Brendan Fraser (Elliott Richards)
Elizabeth Hurley (The Devil)
Frances O'Connor (Alison Gardner)
Miriam Shor (Carol)
Orlando Jones (Daniel)
Paul Adelstein (Bob)
Toby Huss (Jerry)
Gabriel Casseus (Elliott's cellmate/God)
Brian Doyle-Murray (Priest)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 93m
u.s.
release: 10/20/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other harold
ramis films
reviewed on this website:
- analyze
that
- analyze this
- the ice harvest
- multiplicity
|
A
movie actor as ridiculously perfect-looking as Brendan Fraser
might be easy for male critics to hate if not for two things:
He's genuinely smart (any interview with him reveals his articulate
intelligence), and he's willing and eager to make himself look
like a complete nerd. Fraser has a healthy sense of humor about
himself, as he demonstrated in Dudley Do-Right and 1999's
flashy remake of The Mummy, and
in another remake -- Bedazzled, starring Fraser as a dork
who sells his soul to the devil -- he pulls out all the stops.
Fraser begins as the hapless Elliott Richards, a desperately
lonely cubicle drone whose hearty stabs at connecting with anyone
usually get the opposite result. Elliott's dream is to win the
heart of beautiful coworker Allison (Frances O'Connor), who knows
he exists when he's standing in front of her, but then quickly
forgets afterward. Elliott makes the mistake of muttering that
he'd give anything to have her love; immediately, announced by
Tone-Loc's "Wild Thing," a helpful figure enters Elliott's
life -- Satan herself, in the form of Elizabeth Hurley.
Satan offers Elliott seven wishes in exchange for his soul ("You'll
never miss it," she insists). Unsurprisingly, the fair Allison
figures prominently in all of Elliott's wishes, which usually
backfire because Elliott's requests leave a lot of margin for
Satanic embellishment. When Elliott asks to be rich and powerful,
he finds himself retooled as a Colombian drug dealer ("I
can speak Spanish!" says Elliott gleefully, in Spanish).
When that doesn't work out, Elliott asks to be the world's most
sensitive man, or a really big and athletic man, or a really
sophisticated and witty man, or the President -- all with farcical
results that never achieve the basic goal (Allison).
Bedazzled was directed by Harold Ramis (Multiplicity,
Analyze This) from a script
he worked on with Larry Gelbart and Peter Tolan; it's a remake
of a Dudley Moore/Peter Cook comedy from 1967 -- a glancing remake,
I suppose; I haven't seen the original. In and of itself, this
Bedazzled is decent enough entertainment as written, though
many will regret the movie's eleventh-hour detour into pieties;
it turns out, naturally, that Elliott must learn to be himself
if he hopes to find love. (It's a bit more complex than that,
as Ramis knew when he made Groundhog Day.)
Brendan Fraser, though, redeems just about everything. My favorite
of his creations here was the over-sensitive Elliott, who can't
stop weeping at the beauty of a sunset ("When is that sun
going to set?" he finally wails). Second place goes
to Elliott the sweaty, IQ-challenged basketball star, who's challenged
in other areas as well (the screenwriters have given him pitch-perfect
sports clichés to spout to the cameras after a triumph
on the courts). I also enjoyed Elliott as an urban sophisto,
though this segment ends on a somewhat homophobic note. Others
may object to Elliott as a Latino drug lord, though Fraser plays
it with such exuberance that it comes across as more an homage
than a stereotype -- he reminded me of Alfonso Arau as the cheerful
paperback-romance fan in Romancing the Stone.
As for Elizabeth Hurley, she's not quite an actress; her diabolical
shtick, at best, is a notch or two below Elvira, and without
Cassandra Petersen's self-aware, self-satirizing pulchritude.
She gets a gently teasing rapport going with Fraser, though;
late in the game, when he refers to her as his "best friend,"
it doesn't sound totally stupid. Hurley keeps herself amused
throughout -- she seems to be tickling her dialogue on its tummy.
Bedazzled lacks the comic ingenuity of Harold Ramis' best
previous comedies, but it's good fluff. You won't be dazzled,
but you'll be entertained. |