PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 6/17/05)

Watching Bewitched, you can spot the exact moment the movie loses its way. Smitten with a hex, Will Ferrell has just taken Nicole Kidman out on the perfect date. High in the Hollywood hills, they look out over the twinkling city, bonding over everything their characters have in common (she was home-schooled? well, so was he!). He even serenades her as only Will Ferrell can. Back at her house, Kidman sits ready to accept the evening kiss, when alakazam, she freezes the scene and rewinds the entire courtship.

If this romance is going to work, she figures, he'll have to fall in love with who she really is (a witch) without the aid of magic. But if this movie is going to work, then we can't have our heroine rewinding through huge chunks of the story. The trouble with magic is you have to know when to use it. Bewitched brings us under its spell early, using magic only in small doses. Kidman's character, Isabel, is determined to put her sorcery aside, but she just can't help herself when it comes to cheating with little things like programming her VCR or paying for groceries.

She wants a real life, Isabel tells her warlock dad (Michael Caine), a premise every bit as rich as watching Paris Hilton reject her millions to find honest work on a dairy farm. Meanwhile, Ferrell charms in his own way as Jack Wyatt, a washed-up actor in desperate need of a comeback role. The guy shot out of Saturday Night Live to become one of the most powerful stars in Hollywood, and it's great to see that Ferrell's overnight success hasn't diminished his willingness for absurd self-parody.

Still, as endearing as Ferrell and Kidman are on their own, there's just no chemistry between them onscreen. As for the rest of the cast, Bewitched sets up amusing supporting characters (like Shirley MacLaine's hilarious Endora or Kristin Chenoweth's perky neighbor) and then abandons them without explanation. Though it dabbles in playful revisionism (turns out it's ear tugs, not nose twitches that cast spells), Bewitched is basically the opposite of the popular '60s television series. Where the show imagined how domestic life might be different for an average couple if the wife were a witch, the movie transports its premise to that least average of environments, Hollywood, for some routine industry ribbing. The movie starts out strong, but by the time Isabel decides to rewind her failed romance, there's not enough to keep audiences from hitting "Eject" instead. —Peter Debruge