Bedazzled
by Nick Ridgemont
DarkHorizons.com
October 9, 2000


So I was walking around 42nd street on Friday looking for a really out-of-the-way lumber yard when I passed by a guy in front of a theater offering free tickets to go see a movie. I asked him about it, and he explained that they were looking for a bunch of 18-25 year olds to play test audience at that nights press screening of Bedazzled. I signed up, grabbed a friend, and later that night, went down to the Gotham Theater on the East Side.

I have to say that I had preconceptions about this movie being bad. Despite the fact that one of my favorite movies of all time is Ghostbusters, I was wary that Harold Ramis, or anyone for that matter, would not be able to pull off the idea behind Bedazzled successfully. If you know anything about it, then the outline is predictable from the start. Brendan Frazier falls for the girl of his dreams, but, being the ultimate nerd of nerds, has no chance that is, until he meets The Devil (Elizabeth Hurley), who offers him seven wishes for his soul. If you've seen the previews, the structure of the movie becomes obvious from here on out: his first six wishes turn out miserably due to the unspecific nature of his wishes, and eventually, he will try to get out of the contract before using the seventh wish. Ramis now has a difficult task: to keep the audience entertained by the outcome each wish enough to not be counting down till the end of the movie. Oh yeah, and I can't stand Brendan Fraser.

After about an hour of waiting in line, they finally let us all in. We got great seats, and to make things even better, I got a press concession stand card while waiting in line for popcorn. For those of you who don't know about these treasures, they basically grant the holder anything at the concession stand - one time use only, unfortunately. A press person had an extra and gave it to me, which saved me a lot of money (I ended up with a jumbo coke, jumbo sprite, and jumbo popcorn, plus some candy).

The movie opens with very original and hilariously done credits. Basically, we see a series of people going out their daily business at a fast-forward pace. Occasionally, the camera slows down on two or three pedestrians, and a snippet of their personality appears in front of them. For example, at one point, it shows three Buddhists praying with their eyes closed. Signs appear on each of them reading "Praying,"  and "Sleeping." The audience responded well to it, and it definitely set a good tone for the rest of the movie.

Finally, we stop on Brendan Frazier as Elliot on his way to work. On his way in, he manages to annoy or piss off all of his "friends" in the office and profess his inherent geekdom everyone. It's very over the top and not that funny, and luckily, the rest of the movie does not follow such a pattern. Later that night, he meets his co-workers at a bar for drinks, and it is there that we are introduced to Allison, the woman of his dreams. He attempts to speak to her, fails miserably, and announces that he would do anything to have her love him. Cue Liz Hurley, who enters and explains that she can give him anything. Elliot , is of course, unbelieving, and The Devil asks him to wish for anything. Elliot wishes for a Big Mac. Suddenly, a bus pulls up and the devil tells him to get in. They pull up to a McDonalds, go inside, and the devil orders Elliot a Big Mac (unfortunately, being short on cash, she asks that he pay for it). Absolutely hilarious. They then proceed to her lair (inside a discotheque on the edge of the city) where he finally signs the contract to sell his soul.

The rest of the movie is mostly, as predicted, about how each of the wishes fails miserably. Most of the time, they are entertaining. For example, he wishes to be rich, powerful, and married to Allison. He winds up as a Colombian drug lord with a wife that is cheating on him. Wishing to be the most respected man on the planet, the president of the united states, he ends up as Lincoln about to be assassinated. Whenever a wish is going badly, he can call the devil using a special pager she provides him with and make a new wish.

Though most of the scenarios are very funny, they tend to draw on a bit, especially in how Elliot never learns from his mistakes. Ever. Every time he made a bad wish after the first three or four, there were groans in the audience - though again, none of the actual outcomes were unfunny. There's only so many times that we can see how the course of a wish goes before the premise gets a little tiring and we want to get on with movie.

The movie does finally come down to Elliot wanting out of the contract, and he fights his side as best he can. Of course, he does manage to get out of the contract (Duh - that's definitely not a spoiler) but I will say that the movie does not have a Hollywood ending. Well, it does, but not in the way you'd expect. The ending unfortunately, suddenly goes into cheese mode with an unnecessary air of philosophy, when after being sent to prison, Elliot has a chat about good and evil with his cellmate (apparently, God). It really halts the movie in a way, because the movie is built on joke after joke after joke, and then suddenly, an extended period of seriousness, corniness, and philosophy, not really necessary at all to the overall movie.

Liz Hurley played a very entertaining devil. Over the course of the movie, she reeks such havoc on the human race by causing a row of parking meters to expire, then ticketing all the cars, or honking her horn very loudly in a "quiet" zone near a hospital. My only complaint was her constant Crypt-Keeper-like puns about hell, but eventually, you got past them.

And this is easily the best roll I have ever seen Brendan Frazier play. So basically, if you can get by the predictably structured premise of the movie and have no problem with it being called Bedazzled, go see it. You'll most likely laugh your ass off.