The Witches: Edgeless, CGI-laden remake of Roald Dahl story brings nothing new to the cauldron

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C

In the process of remake-making, the question, “Why?” should be asked early, but clearly often isn’t.

Why did Roald Dahl’s The Witches need to be made again, when Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 version starring an imperious Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch remains the stuff of nightmares?

Money is the reason, of course. Nobody’s going to spend $30 to stream a 30-year-old movie (or see it in a theatre in those places where they’re still open). 

A not-that-scary Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch in Roald Dahl’s The Witches.

And hey, what’s the point of inventing CGI if directors like Robert Zemeckis aren’t allowed to indulge in empty-eyed FX like a drunk on a bender? I mean, sure, Huston could convey menace with an economy of motion and the arch of an eyebrow. But does that compare to the less-regal Anne Hathaway’s face splitting open in a giant fanged grin, looking for all the world like a cross between The Joker and Venom?

Despite the writing contributions of Guillermo del Toro, this Americanization of the Dahl novel goes nowhere new, aside from Alabama. Set in the South in the ‘60s, it follows a recently-orphaned, and unnamed boy (Jahzir Bruno) and his grandmother (Octavia Spencer), who encounter witches in their small town, and decide to flee to a mostly-white resort.

Said resort, as bad luck would have it, is hosting a major witches’ convention (the snooty, subtly-racist welcome by the hotel manager, played by Stanley Tucci, is one of the few nods to the fact that the U.S. South is race-torn as the movie takes place).

Much of the early part of the movie is wordily narrated by Chris Rock (“Witches are as real as a rock in your shoe. That's the first thing you need to know. The second thing you need to know, they're here! And they live amongst us.”). Apart from being narratively lazy, it evokes his boy’s-life-narration from the sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, taking anyone who ever watched that show out of the movie as soon as you hear him.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

But the biggest fault of this version of The Witches is it sacrifices dark mood and suspense for antic animated scenes of runaway mice. Our boy hero and his chocolate-munching new friend Bruno (played by Codie-Lei Eastick exactly like Augustus Gloop from Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) run afoul of the witches (who meet under the ironic banner of the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) and are turned into mice, in an effect that leans heavily on digital green smoke.

They are joined by the boy’s pet white mouse Daisy (voiced by Kristin Chenoweth), who, it turns out, had been an escapee from an orphanage before being mouse-ercized herself.

Dahl’s work demands darkness and an edge, but instead there’s a bright Hollywood-y antic sense to Zemeckis’s The Witches, and the overused and unconvincing FX only serve to trivialize what we’re seeing. With all the high-end talent on offer, no one seems committed to the story, least of all Spencer. It rolls out almost mechanically to its finale (which, to my surprise, hadn’t been quite thoroughly cleansed).

Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Adapted by Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro from the novel by Roald Dahl. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Starring Jahzir Bruno, Octavia Spencer and Anne Hathaway. Opens Christmas Day in theatres where available, and on Premium Video on Demand.