In the past, we have seen many movies that target children as their audience but are also enjoyed by people from all age groups. This includes movies like How to Train your Dragon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter, Frozen, Lion King etc. Similarly, The Witches was targeted towards children and was expected to release in theatres until that fell through because of the ongoing pandemic.
The Witches begins with a young orphan boy who goes to live with his grandmother. As the story progress they both bond well and after an incident, his grandmother tells him everything about witches and the way they hate children and their desire to turn them into small animals. This movie tries hard to make you believe that witches do actually exist and they can be anyone around us.
To ensure their safety, they both go live in a big hotel in Alabama but unfortunately, a big coven of witches arrive there and that’s when the real story begins. The movie that was going all dull and boring finds its light with the entrance of Anne Hathaway and her weird non-regional accent.
A big witch meeting takes place in The Witches where we can see the witches slowly reveal in their real form and after a certain turn of events, two children are converted into a small mouse. Now the whole story goes on about how these mice, along with the grandma, try to defeat the witches. The movie also includes the classic Ratatouille scene of speaking mice in the kitchen trying to mess with the food.
Till the witch meeting in the movie, it looks like the writers know what path they are taking and what they want us to see but somewhere after that, the story starts to slowly go a number of different ways and eventually gets lost. You can’t even decide if the ending is good or bad because it makes zero sense to drag the whole story to finally come to such a vaguely useless conclusion. The story has no direction at all.
This is also why adults will find it difficult to enjoy it with their children because it really doesn’t have any moral or basic logic. But the kids might enjoy the colours and the very odd things that will unravel before their eyes.
Also, the movie is set in the year 1967 but Anne Hathaway’s clothes have a beautiful modern look to them. The people, too, seem to be really progressive towards African-Americans as opposed to the reality of those times. A special mention for the editing is needed as it actually saved the film. It is very smooth and clear. The direction is also good in comparison to the story.
The acting by all the characters, especially the Grand Witch (Anne Hathaway) and Grandma (Octavia Spencer) is commendable and makes the film worth watching. Although it needs to be mentioned that the makeup artist did an extremely good job on Anne Hathaway and other characters but Octavia Spencer, at first, did not look like a grandmother.
Overall: The Witches
Even if it did not have a lot of good points to make it a must-watch, it’s still enjoyable to watch with children especially because of Anne Hathaway’s performance. She is the only thing worth watching in Robert Zemeckis’s The Witches.
Watch The Witches here.
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