The story, such as it is, kicks in when the movie star Jack Wyatt (a relatively unplugged Will Ferrell) tries to kick-start a faltering career by starring in a television redo of Bewitched. Because he's playing Darrin, the witch's genially hapless husband, Jack angles for an unknown as Samantha, the better to hog all the limelight.
He ends up with Kidman's Isabel ostensibly because not a single woman in Los Angeles's vast reservoir of acting talent can wiggle her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery. Yet Isabel is also cute, easily improvises with Jack about witch do's and don'ts (you need a permit for a poisoned apple and so forth) and looks mighty fine on camera, which temporarily works against her when she tests better than Jack with the
audience.
Kidman and Ferrell are not an intuitive match, and the romantic side of the story is both half-hearted and half-baked. But this self-contained actress has rarely come across as relaxed in the company of another performer.
For his part, Ferrell enjoys a few ticklishly funny moments with Kidman and Jason Schwartzman, playing his sycophant manager. And the sight (and sounds) of his biking onto the set while loudly singing his own name has comic tang, as does a more developed scene in which Jack pretends he's insufferably pampered. Ferrell looks more streamlined than he has in the past, perhaps in concession to the story's low-wattage romance, but Nora Ephron's attempts to turn him into Tom Hanks Lite are unfortunate.
Best known for screenplays like When Harry Met Sally and for bowdlerizing Lubitsch's Shop Around the Corner with her execrable You've Got Mail, Ephron is one of those directors whose work is only as good as her cast and crew. Outside of the performers there isn't much to look at here, but given the cavalcade of supporting characters there are some distractions, including Shirley MacLaine, Heather Burns and Stephen Colbert. Along with the two stars, they keep the film in gear until it hits the hour mark, whereupon it dies. (Steve Carell, doing Paul Lynde doing Uncle Arthur, provides some late relief.)
The film's screenwriters conjured up a very clever gimmick when they decided to revamp a favorite 1960s television show. Too bad they forgot that a gimmick is no substitute for a screenplay, never mind a real movie.
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