Hey, all. "Moriarty" here. The Pissant dropped this letter in my box and really rained on my parade. See, I'm looking forward to this one. I can't help it... I love the original Peter Cook/Dudley Moore film, and I think the trailer for this one is fun and plays loose enough with the first film that it could work on its own. This guy says they missed the mark, though. Guess we'll see soon enough.
I've been looking at your website for a while, but this is the first time I've actually written to you. I don't know if you really care, and if you care now, when you see the movie, you probably won't care, but Mrs. Pissant and I saw a test screening of the new Harold Ramis flick "Bedazzled" a couple of weeks ago.
We got the tickets from this shady looking guy in the parking garage of the Beverly Center in Hollywood. He asked us if he wanted to see a free movie, and judging from his condition, I assumed it would be a porno movie, so I immediately agreed. Imagine my disappointment when I found out he was just giving us tickets to the latest effort from goofy assed Brendan Frasier. Goddammit, unlesss he's acting with Pauly Shore or mummies, I don't want to look at Brendan Frasier for two hours. Unfortunately, the wife made me go. It was at the screening room of Warners' studios in Hollywood. The real Warner's studio is in Burbank, this Warners' studio just exists so, after all their failures, Warners' can still claim to be a part of Hollywood.
Before they gave us the "privelege" of seeing this mediocre movie, they made us sign a confidentiality agreement, which I am currently breaking. But, according to my warped philosophy, as long as Hollywood keeps making completely happy crappy predictable movies like this one, you're not ruining that much by talking about movies before they're released.
The basic storyline has Brendan Frasier as this total dork with no friends trying to impress a chick. It's something I'm sure all those that log onto this website probably relate to. Unfortunately for horny male viewers like me, the girl that he's attracted to looks like Kathie Lee Gifford, is pretty much asexual and has no real personality. Still, Brendan Frasier is obviously not the brightest guy in the world, so he likes this chick, but he's a total loser and doesn't have a chance with her.
Then Elizabeth Hurley comes on the scene. She plays the devil and hers is the only credible performance in the movie. She displays a wicked British humor here and she's a grade A piece of ass. That hurts the film as a whole though, because five seconds looking at Elizabeth Hurley, I wouldn't give a second glance to Brendan Frasier's Kathie Lee looking broad.
Basically, to impress his dream girl that he can barely even talk to, Brendan Frasier sells his soul to the English hottie devil, and in exchange, she grants him seven wishes. The conflict comes in when he tries to make unspecific wishes, and his life repeatedly becomes a nightmare. For instance, he wishes he was rich, the devil makes him a Colombian druglord. He wishes he was nice and sensitive, he gets beat up by a group of guys and sees his Kathie Lee broad run off with them. He wishes he was a "bad boy" and gets turned into a drunkened Marilyn Manson. It just goes on and on until all his wishes are used up, but of course, he learns to be a good person and therefore wins his soul back from that mean ol' devil.
There is very little new or surprising here. There are some reasonably funny scenes when Hurley, as the devil, tries to wreak havoc on the world, doing things like putting rats in hot dog stands and switching babies in a hospital. But the movie's ending annoyed me more then the movie itself, which is quite a bit. Brendan Frasier ends up not getting his dream girl, but meets a girl that looks just like his dream girl and winds up falling head over heels for her. So basically, looks were all that mattered to him, making him a completely shallow asshole. Who says romance is dead? This is not a good movie at all. It's not a "Battlefield Earth", I doubt anyone's career will be seriously damaged by it. And Hurley's may actually be helped by a good performance from a bad script. But Harold Ramis, the director, has been involved with creating some of the best film comedy of the last 25 years. After masterful work like "Animal House" and "Groundhogn Day", he probably won't be hurt by this weak effort, but he should certainly know better.
