Bedazzled
The Man With Three Brains Note to readers: I saw the new Brendan Fraser - Elizabeth Hurley movie Bedazzled the night before last, and was completely underwhelmed. In fact, since I had forgotten most of the plot points in the space of time spent walking from the theater to my car, I decided that I would refrain from writing a review. What was the point?Last night, I couldn’t get any sleep. I was tossing and turning all night, and had the strangest dream. I dreamt that I was writing a Bedazzled review. I saw myself staring at the screen, pounding the keyboard, typing away incessantly, untrammeled by word choice or uncertainty or typos. When I awoke, I went over to my computer, and, in fact, I had written a Bedazzled review in my sleep. In fact, I had written three separate Bedazzled reviews in my sleep. Apparently, three different areas of my brain had written three separate, widely divergent reviews of the same movie.
I accordingly present to you the three reviews I unconsciously wrote — one from my ego, one from my superego, and one from my id — with only slight edits on my part.
EGO:
Bedazzled is a perfectly average, forgettable movie starring Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. Fraser plays a luckless, lovelorn schlump, slaving away at a tech-support center in San Francisco, slowly watching his sad, depressing life slip away one moment at a time. Hurley comes into his life as the Devil, offering him three wishes for his immortal soul. “You won’t miss it,” she promises. “It’s like your appendix.”
The meager script plays to the strengths of both characters. Fraser has gotten by with being a likeable, sympathetic comic hunk for years now. Hurley is characteristically both sexy and unapproachable in her diabolical role; she’s at her best when she can convince the audience that she’s above their petty wants and desires.
Bedazzled is a dumb, predictable, lifeless piece of bland cinematic fare, but nothing that American audiences haven’t come to expect in recent years. However, it is enlivened by Fraser’s Everyman appeal in a wide range of roles and Hurley’s sultry charms. Bedazzled works hard at being average, and mostly succeeds.
SUPEREGO:
One can only look in shock and horror at the way that the new movie Bedazzled presents the important metaphysical issues of our day. Instead of wrestling with the contrast between the Nietzchean and Manichean concepts of evil, Bedazzled presents a puerile — if not overwhelmingly infantile — view of man’s struggle with desire.
One only has to examine Dante’s Inferno for a more neoclassical look at the reality of eternal damnation:
S’oi credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fimma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
If Bedazzled has any similar thoughts, it keeps them to itself. There is no room here for the inventions of Dante, for the cold arrogance of Milton’s Lucifer, for the worldly countenance of Mephistopheles. The only power displayed by the Devil in this particular movie is the power to make seamless costume changes, and the pre-Raphaelite beauty of the chanteuse playing the Devil only detracts from the message.
The Devil here seeks not to ruin mankind, or even to tempt him into worldly greatness, but to tease and annoy him. By skirting the metaphysical questions of wrongdoing, Bedazzled yet again displays the astounding ignorance inherent in the American concept of evil. The only sin committed in this movie is avarice, committed by the producers, the studio, and even by the popcorn-sellers in the adjacent refreshment area.
ID:
Man, oh, man, what a fantastic movie this was! Oh, sure, that idiot Brendan Fraser was in it, you know (he wasn’t funny or anything) but Liz Hurley was just awesome! She played this wicked evil chick that everybody thought was the Devil or something. So she got to say all this really cool, evil stuff the whole movie, in that super-sexy accent she’s got. Way cool.
The best thing about the movie was her outfits. She got to wear all these really neat clothes, and she changed outfits like two or three times a scene, even. Most of the time, she wore these really low-cut red outfits, but then she’d change into something like a policeman’s uniform with a really tight miniskirt. And she was in this one scene where she was like, this teacher, and she had on this really short plaid skirt, and she was teaching this class and telling them not to do their homework and stuff. Where were the teachers like that when I was in school, dude?
And the best thing was, right at the end, they made like there was going to be a sequel or something. I usually hate when they do that, because most movies these days totally suck. But Liz Hurley was just so cool and wicked and sexy that I hope they do make a sequel, especially if that dimwit Brendan Fraser isn’t in it. I don’t get what women see in him.
Liz Hurley is so hot. And she dropped that dweeb Hugh Grant, you know, so she’s like maybe available or something. I mean, I don’t think I’ll get to meet her or anything, but a reptile brain can dream, can’t he? Especially that one red outfit she was wearing in her office… man, that was worth the price of admission all by itself. They need to make more cool movies like this one, dude. It was awesome.
Well, there you have it. Any comments, suggestions, or psychological referrals will be more than welcome.