There was a brief time in the late 1990s when Brendan Fraser was a major movie star…and it was the best! One such movie from his hey-day was Bedazzled (2000), a remake of the 1967 original starring Dudley Moore.
Fraser is Elliot Richardson, a painfully eager and goofy tech support employee in (unrequited) love with dream girl Alison Gardner (Frances O’Connor), only a few cubicles away. After being spurned and ridiculed by his coworkers, Elliot encounters The Devil (a super sultry Elizabeth Hurley) who offers seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Elliot accepts and uses his wishes to create new personalities for himself and worlds in which Alison falls for him, but The Devil finds a way to slyly ruin each wish. Will angelic Elliot ever win Alison’s affection?
Bedazzled is not a heavy movie; I first saw it at a friend’s sixth-grade slumber party birthday. But all these years later the humor and new scenarios Elliot lives— each one more outlandish than the last— do not fail to entertain.
Elliot’s snarky workmates play supporting characters in every invented world, and it’s devilish fun (pardon the pun) to see them go from caustic working stiffs to worshipping inferiors. The cast is chameleon-like, morphing from Colombian drug lords to macho beach bullies to jocular ESPN commentators and beyond.
Fraser takes hold of the movie with his charged performance, making you cringe at his cloying quirks while still rooting for him to win the girl and grow a backbone. With each new character, Fraser takes on a distinct voice and body language, immersing himself and creating absolute believability. Additionally, Fraser and Hurley make an ideal screen match, trading barbed quips and fighting for dominance with sharp and energetic acting.
Director Harold Ramis (already renowned by 2000 for his films Groundhog Day, Caddyshack and his role as one of the Ghostbusters) gives each new world whimsical detail, and keeps the pace fast by moving quickly through Elliot’s failed wishes.
An interesting plot twist finds Elliot in jail bunking with a mysterious man (Gabriel Casseus) offering wise advice on good versus evil. This man is later revealed to be a pretty prominent religious figure (hint, hint) and his sage advice grounds Bedazzled with some interesting thoughts about human nature, presented cleverly in the context of a light fantasy-comedy movie.
Clocking in at 93 minutes, this movie will swallow you up for a vigorous, snappy ride and leave you smiling. Ramis ties it all up satisfyingly with a bittersweet ending that leaves Elliot with an unexpected, non-supernatural version of the happiness he so craved; the happiness we as an audience wanted for him all along. Bedazzled was not a big hit and it will not go down in history as a cinematic masterpiece, but it is certainly a fun hour and a half spent with an endearing protagonist, great parodies of personality types, and a good message about being (or becoming) yourself. And what about a Brendan Fraser comeback, huh? Who’s with me!?