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Movie Reviews: The Witches and On the Rocks

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Well, instead of looking towards Netflix or Amazon Prime for new movies to review, like I seem to have done every other weekend for the past month, I’m gonna check out the offerings of a couple of the slightly smaller streaming services out there.

Namely HBO Max and Apple TV+.

Okay, so they’re not exactly tiny, independent players in the streaming world. But they both have slightly less market share than Netflix and Amazon, so that’s the angle I’m going with.

First up is HBO, with a film based on a classic children’s book by Roald Dahl. Followed by Apple, with the latest film from writer-director Sofia Coppola.

So without any further ado, let’s get straight to the reviews.

***

First up is “The Witches.”

In late 1967, a young orphaned boy (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno) goes to live with his loving grandma (Octavia Spencer) in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. As the boy and his grandmother encounter some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, she wisely whisks him away to a seaside resort.

Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world’s Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe, under cover, to carry out her nefarious plans.

Nothing like a movie based on a Roald Dahl novel to toss you straight into a wild world of weirdness.

Famous for children’s books like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda,” and “James and the Giant Peach” to name a few, Dahl is actually a literary figure who for some reason never found his way into my life as a child. At least not with his written work.

On the other hand, movies based on his books are practically unavoidable.

Of course as a kid, being completely oblivious of Dahl, I never knew any of these films were connected in any way. But now, looking back on them as an adult, it’s pretty easy to see a lot of similar themes in all of them.

The main two being, bad things can happen, including terrible things which change your life in awful, irreversible ways. And that some adults can be really scary.

Nowhere are these ideas more inescapable than in this adaptation of “The Witches.”

While this film is rated a presumably child friendly PG, I know for a fact that it would have scared the pants off me as a kid. Some of the imagery in this movie is truly horrifying.

Not just visually, though the concept and design of the witches in this movie are something out of a nightmare, with their unnaturally large mouths filled with razor sharp teeth, but also the existential threat these witches pose directly towards children.

The witches here don’t want to do anything so common as just simply kill kids, or even fatten them up so they could cook and eat them à la “Hansel and Gretel.”

No, their hatred for children has driven them something even more sinister. Transforming kids into animals, specifically mice for the most part. With each child doomed to live out the remainder of their days as a rodent, with no hope of a cure.

There’s no magic potion to fix everything. The power of love doesn’t swoop at the end to save the day like many fairy tales. Once you become an animal, there’s no going back.

I know just the thought of that would have terrified me as a kid. It’s the permanence that makes the witches’ scheme so scary.

As an adult though, I think I’ve come to appreciate some of the blunt honesty of Dahl’s work.

Sometimes terrible things happen, and life for you is never the same again.

You might not be turned into a mouse, or get caught in one of the horrors contained in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but bad things do happen. And regardless of if you deserve it, you have to learn to live with the aftermath whether you want to or not.

So in that respect, I do appreciate at least one of the morals of this story.

As for the narrative itself, at least as it’s presented by the filmmakers here, I think the movie left a little bit to be desired.

Oh don’t get me wrong, the story here isn’t terrible. It is a bit more straightforward than I’d prefer though. There’s basically no twists or turns here and nothing at all is left to the imagination. Everything is all explicitly laid out from the beginning.

Plus the dialogue in this movie is practically overrun with exposition.

Half the film feels like Octavia Spencer is just explaining one thing or another in explicit detail to her grandson.

She’s like the encyclopedia on witches.

For a while I thought her detailed knowledge about the evil crones might play into something deeper about her character, like she was formerly a witch herself and was hiding from them or something. But no, grandma just knows absolutely everything about witches because the story needs her to.

By the time we finally encounter the witches in all their full glory, there’s no mystery about them left. We just finally get to see exactly what grandma told us.

Fortunately, on the acting side of things, everyone here is doing solid work.

Even the kids, especially Jahzir Kadeem Bruno, did really well here. Especially in the beginning of the film right after Jahzir’s character loses his parents. Though he barely even says a word near the start, you can see the loss and heartbreak clearly written on his face.

It makes seeing him eventually come out of his shell, thanks to a very persistent grandmother, all the more heartwarming.

Of course I’d be completely remiss if I failed to mention the single greatest, and most entertaining asset this film had to offer. I speak of course of Anne Hathaway, who absolutely devours the scenery every time she’s on screen.

I kind of love that ever since winning her Best Supporting Actress Oscar in “Les Misérables,” Anne just seems content to take on whatever role seems like the most fun.

Whether it’s a stuck-up, self centered diva as in “Ocean’s 8,” or an expert con woman as in “The Hustle,” or even a horrifying she-demon straight out of a bad dream like in this movie, Anne always seems to be having the best time of her life.

Here she’s just hamming it up, being as positively flamboyant as possible, all while putting on this bizarre, bastardized version of a Swedish accent.

It’s becoming very clear to me that if Anne Hathaway is in a movie, her performance will make it worthwhile, regardless of whether the film is good or bad as a whole. At least to some extent.

That said, would I recommend this movie to families looking for a fun movie to watch with their children?

Heck no. Especially not for the young ones. This is the kind of movie that would have kept me up at night with the lights on as a kid.

Just the terrifying design of the witches is something I’d more expect to see from a PG-13 horror movie, not a fantasy adventure movie for children.

On the other hand, the movie is much too whimsical and silly to keep the attention of most teenagers.

I don’t know. Maybe your kids are made of tougher stuff than I was as a child. I did have a nightlight a little further into my adolescence than I’d like to admit.

Even then though, despite some genuinely entertaining performances, I imagine the sparse and over simplistic narrative will leave most disappointed and unsatisfied.

All of which leaves this odd little film only to those like myself who enjoy watching Anne Hathaway steal the show on the small screen.

“The Witches” is rated PG and is available to stream on HBO Max.

***

The other movie this week is “On the Rocks.”

Laura (Rashida Jones) thinks she’s happily hitched, but when her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) starts logging late hours at the office with a new co-worker, Laura begins to fear the worst.

She turns to the one man she suspects may have insight. Her charming, impulsive father Felix (Bill Murray), who insists they investigate the situation. As the two begin prowling New York at night, careening from uptown parties to downtown hotspots, they discover at the heart of their journey lies their own relationship.

This is a movie I had planned to talk about last week, but as some of you may know I’m a sucker for animation and at the last minute I decided to cover the Chinese inspired animated fantasy, “Over the Moon,” instead.

Naturally, that isn’t to say this film didn’t have anything going for it. It certainly does, especially in its lead actors, Bill Murray and Rashida Jones, and the film’s writer and director, Sofia Coppola, daughter of legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

Those looking for a straight comedy thanks to Murray’s involvement will likely be very disappointed though.

While the movie does have a handful of funny moments, the film is less about the laughs and more focused on the relationships between our main characters. Specifically Laura and her father Felix.

The film actually kind of turns a typical “on the rocks” relationship movie on its head.

Though Laura is initially paranoid that Dean is seeing another woman on the side, it’s really her father that fans the flame of her concerns.

This is largely due to her dad projecting his own thought processes onto Dean. Ideas like, all men are pigs who are unable to control themselves around women due to their natural instinct to procreate above all else.

It’s a very toxic mindset to say the least. Like many men with the same philosophy though, it’s how her father Felix justifies his own poor behavior around women.

Throughout the film though Felix is exceedingly charming, and makes friends with practically everyone he meets, which allows him to basically coast through life without facing much of any consequences for his misguided philosophy on life.

Naturally, this changes by the end of the film, and it makes for a very compelling final thesis for the movie. I definitely appreciate what Sofia Coppola did with the message and the moral. It’s one I imagine that many men could stand to confront in their own lives.

That said, while I very much like the ideas presented here, the overall narrative in this movie really just didn’t grab me as much as I would have liked. Honestly though, I can’t really tell you why.

There’s nothing wrong with the performances. Both Bill Murray and Rashida Jones are great here, and make for a believable father-daughter pair.

I guess the conflict was just a little more subdued than I would have preferred. There’s no show stopping dramatic moments here. It’s definitely not “A Marriage Story.” Adam Driver doesn’t suddenly come out of nowhere and punch a hole through a wall in a brief fit of rage.

In a way, I guess that makes this movie all the more realistic.

Most people’s lives are more subdued in reality, and in many cases people are able to work out their issues with each other without major knock-down-drag-out arguments.

Does it make for the most entertaining cinematic experience? Well, probably not. But again, I appreciate what Coppola created here.

Even if this wasn’t exactly a film that enthralled me, there are some very key aspects I liked. 

Does that make this movie worth rushing out to buy a subscription to Apple TV+? Again, likely not. But if it’s a service you already pay for, and you don’t mind your films being a little more on the restrained side, there definitely is a positive experience to be had here.

“On the Rocks” is rated R and is available to stream on Apple TV+.

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