Movie Review: The Witches

Movie Review: The Witches                                                                                                     7-28-20

Based on the book by Roald Dahl, The Witches was one of Jim Henson’s final projects he’d be involved with, and is about a boy named Luke. His grandmother warns him about witches, who tore off one of her fingers when she was younger. One day, Luke and his grandmother visit a hotel for the weekend, but little does anyone know that a group of witches were holding a meeting to get rid of all the kids in England by turning them into mice! Now Luke, who got turned into a mouse himself, has to save the country before the witches start their plan.

The Witches is another diamond in the rough with great cinematography and on-set locations, life-like animatronics, a strong performance from Angelica Huston, and a story that stays true to Dahl’s work.

One of the witches trying to seduce Luke with a pet snake.

Also noteworthy are the grotesque prosthetic makeup for the witch characters, which easily rivals the most advanced motion-capture technology.

I don’t have much to complain about for this movie, though I personally wish there were more animatronics. However, it’s understandable, since Jim was also working on The Jim Henson Hour and planning on selling the Muppets to Disney.*

This isn't a trained mouse; It is, in fact, a puppet.

In conclusion, The Witches may not be as good as the three original Muppet movies (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan), The Witches is a fun family film for those too young or sensitive for The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth.

Rating: 3.45 stars out of 5.

*Near the end of his lifetime, Jim Henson was planning to sell the Muppets to Disney. He felt that if there was one company who kept their characters alive long after their creators died, it was Disney. Jim’s deal with Disney included not just making more TV shows and movies, but also theme park attractions. In fact, the TV special ‘The Muppets at Walt Disney World’ was all about the Muppets being inducted into the Disney family.

Unfortunately, ten days after the special aired, Jim Henson passed away at the age of 53 from pneumonia. Disney and The Jim Henson Company cancelled their agreements, but after the box-office failure of ‘Muppets From Space’ and the lackluster direct-to-video movie ‘Kermit’s Swamp Years’, the JHC sold the Muppets to Disney in 2004.