Beelzebub Lite
What would you do if you could do anything in the
world? Who would you be if you could be anyone in the
world? These are the fundamental questions posed in
Bedazzled, a remake of Stanley Donen's 1967 comedy
of the same name, starring Peter Cook and Dudley
Moore. And if these seem like shallow questions, well,
they are. Despite its roots in the legend of Faust,
the sober tale of a man who sells his soul to the
Devil, this movie takes a comic look at good and evil,
focusing on the ways that temptation works in the
twentieth century, and, ultimately, what it has to do
with personal happiness or salvation, whichever comes
first.
Director, co-writer, and co-producer Harold Ramis
(Groundhog Day, Analyze This) here adapts the
original Bedazzled's story of Stanley, a hapless
short order cook who sells his soul to the Devil in
exchange for the attentions of his beloved Margaret, a
glamorous and unobtainable waitress. While he sticks
to this basic premise, Ramis makes the Devil a woman,
namely, Elizabeth Hurley, clad in ever-changing bright
red and skin-tight outfits. This seductress is based
on Raquel Welch's brief but memorable role as Lust in
the original film, which introduced all the seven
deadly sins. While a female Satan might be
acknowledging that a woman is now credible to
audiences as a power player second only to God, it's
also rehashing the old story of woman as sexual
temptress and cause of man's fall from grace. Either
way, nothing here is particularly progressive.
Bedazzled begins with the Devil searching the world
for her next victim. The camera flies over the earth
as if taking spy-satellite photos, clicking in closer
and closer, honing in on San Francisco (full of
prospects), then roaming quickly over the landscape
and through the crowds looking for a potential mark.
The search leads to Elliot Richards (Brendon Fraser,
who also survived The Mummy and Blast From the Past). She selects him because he is utterly eager to
please, lonely, and inept socially — basically a
desperate guy with nothing to lose.
The Devil offers Elliot "seven utterly fabulous wishes
for one piddly little soul," adding, "Souls are
overrated. What has yours done for you lately?" Elliot
has no particular attachment to his soul, but still he
isn't ready to part with it. But our Devil has all
the powers of twentieth century media at her disposal
and she marshals an array of marketing tricks to make
her pitch. She produces a wall of TV monitors, on
which Elliot sees himself as the star of his own life
— a Fabio clone with flowing mane and a wholly
compliant woman in his arms. This media demo of the
possibility that he could consummate his love for his
beautiful and unattainable coworker, Allison Gardener
(Mansfield Park's Frances O'Connor), convinces
Elliot to sign on the dotted line. But as soon as he
accepts the Devil's deal, things start going wrong,
mostly because this Devil is determined to sabotage
Elliot's desire, and really, to make him regret his
decision. Much like the Devil in the 1967 film, she
is continually up to mischief, though not particularly
interested in evil per se. She makes parking meters
expire, causes traffic lights to fail (causing a
spectacular multi-car pile-up), and dispenses Tic-Tacs
to hospital patients. When Elliot objects to this last
prank, she argues, charmingly, "Sick people have
notoriously bad breath. I'm performing a public
service here."
The fact that all of his hopes and dreams are pinned
on winning Allison supplies the film's most
provocative gender twist — a man refashioning himself
to please a woman. For his first wish, he wants to be
rich, powerful, and married to Allison, so the Devil
makes him a swarthy Colombian drug lord, not exactly
the sort of thing Elliot is good at. Next, he wishes
to be an emotionally sensitive man, but, pale and
timid, he finds it is harder than he thought to figure
out what Allison wants. In reaction he asks to be
powerful and athletic, so he becomes "Elliot the
Almighty"
(a.k.a. the "Double Vanilla Funk"), an awesome
basketball player. And on he goes trying to wish
himself to perfection. This time when he meets
Allison, the camera accentuates his height by looking
over his shoulder down at her. His new physical
prowess is not equaled by intelligence, however, and
the comedy in this round is based on his
dumb-jockness.
Elliot's radical transformations are a marked contrast
to Stanley's, whose wishes brought on more subtle
changes his in life but not his appearance. The tones
of the two films are also quite different. The earlier
version is set against quaint English town-and-country
backdrops, and the emphasis is on dialogue. The pace
is relaxed and Cook's Devil strolls and bikes around
the hills and dales, taking his time getting about.
The remade Bedazzled is marked by speed and action.
Hurley races about in a hot black Lamborghini Diablo.
She even hurries along Elliot's selections —
"Darling, I have an earthquake in Chile in eight
minutes. Any chances of making a wish here?" Elliot's
is always in a hurry. His various adventures have him
racing through the jungle in an SUV, hanging off a
helicopter, hurtling through the air without a
parachute, flying through the air like Michael Jordan
to make a slam-dunk. Plus, he is repeatedly eager to
end his wishes (with a pager Satan gives him for
such occasions), sometimes because it is the only way
to save his life, sometimes because he's distressed at
how things are turning out.
But poor Elliot never has a chance to see what life
might be like if he enjoyed the characteristics he
craves — power, wealth, beauty, or potency. The Devil
always stacks the cards against him and introduces a
bit of hell into each possibility. The point may be
that hell is on earth or within individuals who crave
superficial prizes, but each time Elliot takes on the
external attributes of his new self, he is never given
an "internal" realignment. Sometimes this is comical,
as when he's in drug-lord mode and tells his
astonished crew that peddling dope is "Wrong!" But it
also can be troubling, as when his wish to be witty
and intelligent leads to a life as a gay, Pulitzer
Prize-winning author. Elliot is horrified to find he's
gay and unable to respond to a willing Allison, and
ends that wish with celerity. So his sense of self is
unchanged, despite the changes in his abilities and
appearance. He remains self-centered — unwilling and
unable to explore the possibilities that each of his
new selves offers.
Thus the film's humor is based on Elliot's ongoing
shallowness and emotional immaturity. The film's
obvious lesson is that the things we think will make
us attractive don't and mere wishful thinking won't
transform us into desirable people. But Bedazzled
has a hard time driving that point home because
Elliot's inevitable redemption suffers from the same
speediness and lack of depth he has brought to each of
his wishes. Without a last-minute visit from a wise
angel in the form of a prison cell mate, dim-witted
Elliot wouldn't have figured out a thing. Because of
this intervention, however, he tells the Devil that he
now realizes that changes in his life won't come "by
magic." Equating the Devil's deceptions with magic
completely sidesteps the issue of evil, faith, or
inner strength. But maybe it isn't fair to ask a
shallow, action-pumped comedy to address such issues.
If that's the case, Bedazzled does just fine: its
laughs are frequent and soulless.
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