The Witches
The Witches (2020 film)
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| Directed by | Robert Zemeckis |
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| Written by |
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| Based on | The Witches by Roald Dahl |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
| Cinematography | Don Burgess |
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Release date |
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Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country |
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| Language | English |
| Box office | $22.1 million[2] |
Roald Dahl's The Witches is a 2020 dark fantasy comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo del Toro. It is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl and is the second feature-length adaptation of the novel, following the 1990 film of the same name directed by Nicolas Roeg. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Stanley Tucci, and is narrated by Chris Rock.
The Witches was made available on HBO Max in the United States on October 22, 2020,[3][4] with a theatrical release in select international markets beginning on October 28, 2020. It received mixed reviews from critics, who deemed it inferior to Roeg's film, though Hathaway's performance received praise.
Plot[edit]
In 1968 Alabama, a young boy named Charlie Hansen, goes to live with his grandmother following the death of his parents in Chicago. Slowly, the boy gets cheered up with his grandmother Agatha, buying him a pet mouse whom he names Daisy. One day, Charlie goes to buy a box of nails to train Daisy and to build a house for her as well. The boy is approached by a witch trying to lure him with a snake and a caramel, but Agatha calls him and the witch disappears.
After telling Agatha about the encounter, Charlie learns that the witches are in fact real. She says a witch cursed her best friend Alice into spending the rest of her life as a chicken. Agatha says that witches never leave once they find a child. Frantically, Charlie and Agatha decide to stay in a nearby hotel where her cousin Eston is the executive chef. While there, Agatha tells, Charlie how to tell a witch from an ordinary woman: real witches have claws instead of fingernails which they hide by wearing gloves, are bald which they hide by wearing wigs that give them rashes, have square feet with no toes which they hide by wearing sensible shoes, have a purple tinge in their pupils and have a powerful sense of smell which they use to sniff out children.
The next day, Charlie takes Daisy and a rope to go get some training done at a grand hall. As he walks there, he meets a gluttonous but friendly boy named Bruno, who gets pulled away by his mother. Charlie, goes into the grand hall alone. As he's getting ready to train Daisy, a group of witches led by their all-powerful leader, the Grand High Witch, go into the grand hall; the boy hides under the stage and discovers that the Grand High Witch is planning to give the world's children a potion that can transform them into mice. The potion will be used in confectionery products in sweet shops and candy stores.
Having eaten a chocolate bar laced with potion previously given to him by the Grand High Witch, Bruno transforms into a mouse. He crawls into the vent and finds, Charlie and Daisy hiding. The Grand High Witch discovers, Charlie and forcefully transforms him into a mouse as well. Luckily, the children escape.
Fleeing to the hotel room where the boy and his grandmother are staying, they tell the grandmother of the witches' plan and discover that the Grand High Witch is staying in the hotel room below them and that Daisy was once an orphaned young human girl named Mary turned into a mouse by a witch. Charlie, Bruno, and Mary devise a plan to get a bottle of the potion so that the grandmother can devise a cure to turn them back into children. The plan is successful, but since, Agatha is unable to create a cure, they instead decide to put the potion into a broth of pea soup which will be given to the witches during their dinner.
As the rest of the witches drink the soup, the Grand High Witch encounters, Agatha. They realize they had met before, as the Grand High Witch was the witch that turned Alice into a chicken. While the mice steal the Grand High Witch's room key, the witches all begin turning into rats and chaos ensues.
After, Agatha and the mice flee to the Grand High Witch's room, the grandmother starts to collect all the potions to destroy them. The Grand High Witch finds Agatha, and prepares to kill her but the mice intervene and trick the Grand High Witch into swallowing her own potion, transforming her into a rat. They trap her in an ice bucket and prevent her from escaping. Before they leave the room, the grandmother takes the Grand High Witch's trunk full of money and releases her cat Hades from its cage. As they close the door, Hades attacks and kills her.
Agatha, tries to return Bruno and explain the situation to his parents, but are unsuccessful. Mary, Bruno, Charlie, and Agatha all go home together with the Grand High Witch's trunk and become a family.
Charlie and Agatha decide to help children hunt witches around the world using the very money and potions the witches would have used to destroy the children.
Cast[edit]
- Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch, a powerful and evil witch who is the leader of all witches in the world. Hathaway also voices her rat form.
- Octavia Spencer as Agatha Hansen, a healer and Charlie's grandmother who is the long-time old rival of the Grand High Witch.
- Miranda Sarfo Peprah portrays a young version of Agatha.
- Stanley Tucci as Mr. R.J Stringer, the hotel manager.
- Jahzir Kadeem Bruno as Charlie Hansen, a young boy who is turned into a mouse by the Grand High Witch. Bruno also voices his mouse form.
- Chris Rock as the voice of Older Charlie, the narrator and as an elder mouse who tells the firsthand account of his experience as a child to a group of children.
- Codie-Lei Eastick as Bruno Jenkins, an English boy who is turned into a mouse. Eastick also voices his mouse form.
- Kristin Chenoweth as the voice of Mary / Daisy, Charlie's pet mouse. It's revealed that she was once a human girl named Mary who ran away from the orphanage and was turned into a mouse by the witches four months prior to the events of the film.[5][6][7]
- Charles Edwards as Mr. Jenkins, Bruno's father.
- Morgana Robinson as Mrs. Jenkins, Bruno's mother.
- Josette Simon as Zelda, a witch.[8]
- Eugenia Caruso as Consuella, a witch.[8]
- Ana-Maria Maskell as Esmerelda, a witch.[8]
- Orla O'Rourke as Saoirse, a witch.[8]
- Penny Lisle as a witch.[8]
- Simon Manyonda as Sous-Chef
- Philippe Spall as a Chef
- Brian Bovell as Reginald
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Talks of a new adaptation of Dahl's novel began in December 2008, when Guillermo del Toro expressed interest in making a stop motion film.[9] No further developments on the potential project emerged until ten years later in June 2018, when Robert Zemeckis was hired to direct and write the script. Del Toro would produce, alongside Zemeckis and Alfonso Cuarón, in addition to having a screenplay credit.
The film takes place in Alabama during the 1960s, instead of the novel's 1980s England and Norway, and the boy protagonist is African-American, instead of Norwegian-British like the boy in the original novel and previous adaptations.[10] Nevertheless the adaptation was described by Zemeckis as being closer to the original novel than 1990 adaptation, directed by Nicolas Roeg.[11] Kenya Barris co-wrote the film.
Casting[edit]
In January 2019, Anne Hathaway was cast in the role of Grand High Witch.[12] Octavia Spencer was cast in February, with newcomers Jahzir Bruno and Codie-Lei Eastick also joining.[13] In May, Stanley Tucci and Chris Rock were added.[14] In September 2020 it was revealed that Kristin Chenoweth was cast in the film.[15]
Filming[edit]
Principal photography began on May 8, 2019, with filming locations including Alabama, Georgia and at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in Hertfordshire, England and Virginia Water Lake in Surrey, England. It was expected to wrap on June 25.[16][14][17] On June 19, a crew member was stabbed in the neck on the Warner Bros. Studios set in Leavesden.[18]
Marketing[edit]
The film collaborated with a Roblox game named "Islands" for a limited-time Halloween event. It features a boss battle with the Grand High Witch, the main antagonist of the film.[19]
Music[edit]
In July 2019, Zemeckis's regular collaborator, Alan Silvestri, was revealed to be scoring the film.[20] A soundtrack featuring Silvestri's score released by WaterTower Music on October 23, 2020.[21]
Release[edit]
The Witches was scheduled to be released on October 16, 2020.[22] On October 25, 2019, Warner Bros. moved up the release of the film by a week.[23] However, on June 12, 2020, Warner Bros. announced that they pulled the film off the 2020 schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[24]
The film was digitally released in the United States on October 22, 2020 via HBO Max.[25] In November, Variety reported the film was the ninth-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.[26] The international theatrical release began on October 28.[27]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film grossed $4.9 million in twelve countries in its first week of release.[2] The weekend of November 20, the film made $1.2 million from 23 countries, for a running total of $15.1 million.[28]
Critical response[edit]
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 49% of 154 critic reviews are positive for The Witches, with an average rating of 5.50/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The Witches misses a few spells, but Anne Hathaway's game performance might be enough to bewitch fans of this Roald Dahl tale."[29] According to Metacritic, which sampled 30 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 47 out of 100, the film received "mixed or average reviews".[30]
In his two out of four star review, Richard Roeper from the Chicago Sun-Times praised the special effects and the performances, but found the film to be "far too disturbing for young children and not edgy enough to captivate adults."[31] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D+ calling the film "dreadful" and stating, "Zemeckis has made some unsuccessful films over the last 20 years, but The Witches is the most frustrating of them all because it feels like it could've been made by somebody else. Anybody else. Roeg's version may have scarred a generation of kids for life, but at least they remembered it."[32] Korey Coleman of Double Toasted felt that the movie was a missed opportunity to tell "the ultimate Karen story", as the Grand High Witch displayed mannerisms associated with that stereotype stating, "This is an entitled, rude, rich white woman who hates black people, poor people and kids, just because she feels inconvenienced by them and...always [sic] calling the manager."[33]
After The film's release, A Youtuber posted a 4 videos, Where in both the 1990 and 2020 version of The Witches, Both Boys Die at the hands of The Grand High Witch.
Controversy[edit]
Numerous disability advocates, including British Paralympic swimmer Amy Marren, accused the film of perpetuating bias against individuals with Ectrodactyly and other limb differences.[34] Lauren Appelbaum, a spokesperson for advocacy group RespectAbility, said the film portrays limb differences as "hideous or something to be afraid of." On November 4, 2020, Warner Bros. issued a statement in which they apologized for offending people with disabilities. They further added that they had worked with "designers and artists to come up with a new interpretation of the cat-like claws that are described in the book. [...] The film is about kindness. [...] It was never the intention for viewers to feel that the fantastical, non-human creatures were meant to represent them."[35] Hathaway also issued an apology over the film's portrayal, saying "I particularly want to say I'm sorry to kids with limb differences", and "Now that I know better I promise I'll do better."[36]
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