First of all, I was kind of glad that Spike Lee’s new movie, which I’ve been looking forward to seeing, didn’t get to Greenville this week, because I couldn’t have handled sitting through things titled Bedazzled and Bamboozled on the same day; together they sound like a law firm from a Marx Brothers movie. Secondly, this remake of a 1967 comedy written by and starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook was a lot funnier than I expected, mainly because the distributors didn’t give away all the jokes in the trailers – as is currently fashionable.
When Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser), a maladroit social pariah who carries around Polaroids of favorite audio components to show with his dotcom coworkers, makes a desperate wish for the love of oblivious officemate Allison (Frances O’Connor, from Mansfield Park), the Princess of Darkness (Elizabeth Hurley) shows up to grant him seven opportunities to wish his dreams into reality. All he has to do in return is sign the usual Faustian contract. But Satan is a tricky literalist – albeit a sumptuous one dressed in an eye-popping succession of brief, tight, immaculately tailored outfits – so Elliot’s wishes invariably go wrong when he neglects to spell out every little detail of the scenario.
I won’t go into specifics, because the trailers give away the results of only the first wish (Elliott asks to be rich and powerful and married to Allison; he wakes up a Frank Zappa-looking Colombian drug lord whose wife despises him and whose underlings are plotting his death). But the cruel ramifications of all the other wishes, except one, are pretty surprising. Each involves some neat makeup FX and a slightly different incarnation of both Allison and Elliott’s workplace detractors (including the recently very busy Orlando Jones, also seen in The Replacements and the upcoming Double Take).
Co-scripted by director Harold Ramis (Caddyshack, Groundhog Day), “M*A*S*H” honcho Larry Gelbart, and Pete Tolan (who co-wrote the underrated What Planet Are You From?), Bedazzled works by nature of Fraser’s natural goofy ingenuousness – as in Blast From the Past he plays a large nerd very well – and pacing that gets through all the gags in 90 minutes. Little time gets wasted on unfunny stuff. Which makes this, after Woman on Top, the second pleasant surprise of the fall movie season. B
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