Bedazzled

It must. How else to rationally explain why it makes remake after remake after remake? How else to explain, with some measure of sanity and logic, why it continues to lay out coin a'plenty to make, again and again, films and movies that were not very successful the first time around?

Films and movies like "Bedazzled", which, yes, is a remake. A remake of a movie that wasn't very successful: "Bedazzled" (1967), starring Peter Cook and Raquel Welch. (In that version, incidentally, Cook was the Devil and Welch was Lust, one of the seven deadly sins.)

In "Bedazzled", this time around, Elizabeth Hurley plays Satan. Harold Ramis directs (more or less). Brendan Fraser shows up to be the male love interest. Frances O'Connor is the sweet and innocent female lead.

Elizabeth Hurley does a so-so job as the Devil. She would have done better as Lust, though. As Satan she comes across as too perfect, too even, too. . . well, good.

I mentioned a moment ago the credited director is Harold Ramis. I say 'credited' because there doesn't seem to be much direction here. There isn't much direction here because Ramis, instead of using the original screenplay as source material, is given over to ad-libbing. In "Ghostbusters" or "Groundhog Day" that worked. Here it doesn't because Hurley isn't a Bill Murray and Fraser wouldn't know comedy if it bit him. This is not a clever effort, this remake. It is not naughty when it should be naughty. It isn't wicked when it should be oh-so wicked. And it isn't comedic when it must be.

Much of the reason for this overall failing, I suppose, is because Satan isn't allowed to do what Satan is known to do: Collect souls once sold and bargained for.

I mentioned before Brendan Fraser. I would say he stars in "Bedazzled", but he really doesn't. He makes an appearance, reads stilted and contrived lines, and tries to come across as a bargain basement Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant romantic-comedy male lead.

I said: Tries. He fails, for whatever that is worth.

I digress. Fraser is Elliot. An office nerd (hardly believeable, this, given Fraser's physical looks), who has had, for three years, a crush on the lovely and sweet Alison (Frances O'Connor), who, of course, hardly notices him.

This, that. That, this. A handful of predictable cliches presented as plot. Then Elliot meets the devil in a red dress. (She's wearing the dress, incidentally.) The devil (Hurley) offers Elliot the standard contract--seven wishes for his soul.

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