“When is that darn thing gonna set?”

Justin’s rating: She’s the princess of darkness. Here’s her card.

Justin’s review: In my weird little mind, some actors feel like friends from the ’90s that will always be there, just waiting for me to reconnect with them in a film. One of those people is Brendan Fraser, who had a pretty fun run for a while there and could pull off a range from action star to romcom lead, sometimes in the same year.

Fraser is Elliot, an IT nerd who’s somewhat of a pushover and an annoying dork at the same time. He’s hopelessly in love — from afar — with his co-worker Allison but clearly has no shot with her. A profound wish later, and the Devil shows up as Elizabeth Hurley, stuffed into a variety of latex outfits that no doubt became treasured memories to teenage boys.

The Devil offers Elliot a deal: She’ll give him seven wishes to help him reinvent himself and win over Allison, and in exchange, he’ll surrender his soul when the wishes are up. Of course, the Devil’s not going to play fair, and all of the wishes come with monkey paw twists. So the question is whether Elliot can outsmart a pretty smart being and turn his wish into romantic success.

Director Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) took the 1967 original and respun it with a female Satan and a romcom angle. This refresh kind of works, giving Hurley a saucy role to devour and Fraser plenty of opportunities to overact and do some fun physical comedy.

While this initially begins with the Devil being the clear antagonist looking to snooker in Elliot, the pair have a strange chemistry that borders on something like friendship. That stands in stark contrast to Elliot’s almost complete lack of connection to Allison, who is more of a fantasy than all of his wishes.

It’s a lot of fun to see Elliot’s wishes become strange alternate lives, turning him into a rich drug dealer, a hulking basketball player, a super-sensitive songwriter, Abraham Lincoln, and so on. All of the silliness does a great job distracting the viewer from the really obvious fault in this entire narrative, which is why the Devil feels the need to mess with Elliot’s wishes at all. I mean, she’s going to take him to hell anyway, so why all the mind games? It seems unnecessarily petty.

Bedazzled is a lot of wacky situations without enough laughs to truly propel this into the stratosphere. I kind of notice this about comedies that lean heavy into fantasy, that the director falls in love with all of the sets and costumes and special effects while neglecting the actual need for continual jokes.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s enough to enjoy here, from all of the wild ways that Elliot’s wishes are turned against him to to the reuse of Elliot’s coworkers in various fantasy roles to Elizabeth Hurley’s continual outfit changes. There are a few chuckles and plenty of visual gags, but the framework here gets old after a little while and made me antsy to get back to the Hurley/Fraser dynamic that’s all-too-brief.

I’ve seen this a couple times, and while it’s never going to be a go-to flick for me, it’s a feel-good experience and I would much rather see this than, say, Little Nicky.

Intermission!

• Hurley wears 19 different outfits as the Devil, according to the film’s costume designer
• This was back when there were only 6.2 billion people
• The opening credits labeling people (and animals) with their secrets and traits is pretty clever
• That is one heck of a pool shot
• “I think you’re hot.” “You have no idea.”
• The Devil making the McDonald’s wish come true was pretty funny ($3.47 seems so cheap these days)
• Club DV8
• “These are the cookies my grandma used to bake!”
• How do you know this movie was made in 2000? A pager is a key plot element.
• He’s so happy to find out he speaks Spanish
• Ripping off your mustache looks painful
• “I’m not with her!”
• “I never wipe my tears away… small, wet, salty badges of emotional truth.”
• He wrote a song about the dolphins. I’m glad we could hear it.
• OK, Elliot continually crying at the sunset was pretty funny
• The Diablos, that’s pretty on the nose
• It is pretty cool how tall they make Fraser for the basketball
• He’s so very sweaty
• “You can’t give sick people Tic Tacs!”
• The Devil’s school teacher outfit, wow
• “Just think of me like a computer virus.” “I think of you like a plague!”
• “Don’t get too excited, it’s just a halloween costume.”