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'Bedazzled'? Bedraggled
With sophomoric humor and lack of subtlety, it's all downhill after the opening credits.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 19, 2000
[Photo: 20th Century Fox]
Elizabeth Hurley plays the devil, who gives a computer nerd, played by Brendan Fraser, seven wishes in exchange for his soul.
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Bedazzled is a pointless remake of a clever 1967 comedy starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, a duel of British wits that still holds up after repeated viewings.
The plot is a twist on Faust, with a lovelorn man selling his soul to the devil in exchange for seven wishes aimed to deliver the woman of his dreams. At least, that's all director and co-writer Harold Ramis gleaned from the first film. He apparently missed the theological satire and nonchalant mischief Moore and Cook devised under Stanley Donen's light-fingered direction.
The new, unimproved Bedazzled is ugly American humor, meaning lots of cleavage and crotch jokes. Even when dialogue is lifted directly from the original, all sense of sophistication is missing. Fantasy is more elaborate and sex is the punchline for everything. The film isn't as funny as its mugging actors seem to believe.
Brendan Fraser plays Elliot Richards, a computer nerd with a crush on a co-worker (Frances O'Connor). Nobody will confuse his goofy office glad-handing with Moore's impeccable moping. Elliot's pact is with a different sort of Satan; Elizabeth Hurley vamping in revealing costumes instead of Cook's droll humor. Subtlety is the first casualty of Ramis' movie.
Mockery is the second. Whatever Moore wished in the original wasn't as important as the script's irreverent swipes at religion. Cook's devil was bored with his job, toying with souls as if he were twisting paper clips at the office. His off-hand dismissals of Moore's secular curiosity were crisply absurd, even introducing the seven deadly sins in human form (including Raquel Welch as Lust).
Ramis' Bedazzled is all about Elliot's fantasies, with Hurley constantly urging him to the next mistaken wish. He wants money and power, so she makes him a Colombian cocaine kingpin. The sequence runs several minutes with subtitles for its Spanish dialogue with only one decent gag, blown in preview trailers.
At least it's the only wish that isn't spoiled by sex. Elliot's various fantasies sour when physical inadequacy, homosexuality or promiscuity enter the picture. Sex is the banana peel everyone slips on in modern comedy, admittedly earning easy laughs no matter how often it's used.
Ramis' only fresh touches occur in the opening credits, when Satan scans profiles of the world's 6.2-billion souls, narrowing her search to Elliot. Blending film speeds and snappy visuals, the movie begins with a promising rhythm. Then people start talking, and sameness settles in.
Fraser is an energetic misfit, gamely altering his dreamboat looks with funny makeup effects. Hurley changes her clothes even more often, sometimes twice in the same shot, as if Lucifer has nothing better to do than shop. The only things remaining from Moore and Cook's 1967 classic are the miniskirts.
Bedazzled
- Grade: C-
- Director: Harold Ramis
- Cast: Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, Frances O'Connor, Orlando Jones, Gabriel Cassius, Rudolf Martin
- Screenplay: Larry Gelbart, Harold Ramis, Peter Tolan, based on the 1967 screenplay, Bedazzled, by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
- Rating: PG-13; sexual situations, profanity, mild violence, drug abuse
- Running time: 90 min.
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