Hocus Pocus (1993)
Hocus Pocus
- 4/5 Cameras 🎥🎥🎥🎥
- Directed by: Kenny Ortega
- Starring: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy
- Where to find it: Dinsey +
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Everyone has seasonal traditions, whether it’s decorating
the Christmas tree on the first Saturday in December or making resolutions on
New Years’ Eve. For me, my favourite holiday tradition, and one I think
everyone should adopt, is watching Hocus Pocus at Halloween time. Disney
Halloween films, especially those released in the 1990s (The Nightmare Before
Christmas, for example) have a knack for conjuring up a sense of nostalgia in
audiences by perfectly encapsulating the spirit of Halloween in a way that takes
you right back to the days where you’d go Trick or Treating, and Hocus Pocus is
no exception.
Set in Salem, Massachusetts, 300 years have gone by since the
Sanderson sisters, Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary
(Kathy Najimy) were executed for practicing the child-murdering type of witchcraft.
The sisters return to the land of the living after the new kid on the block Max
(Omri Katz) accidentally breaks a spell cast by the sisters before their demise
and have one night to ensure their continuing existence.
Much like most films of the era Hocus Pocus is incredibly
cheesy, and it’s full of plenty of reasons to make you question its’ PG rating
(It’s packed with virgin jokes and there’s even a scene where the sisters are
burnt alive in a kiln), but this can all be glossed over when you factor in how
entertaining the film is. All three Sanderson sisters, but in particular Bette
Midler’s Winifred, are a blast; just scary enough for children, yet outlandish
enough for adults to enjoy, all tied together nicely with each sister’s iconic
and distinct colour palette. Each scene involving the sisters interacting with
the modern world is hilarious, especially their encounter with a man dressed as
their ‘master’, the devil.
The witches may be the true stars of Hocus Pocus, but that doesn’t
mean that the rest of the cast is to be ignored. Yes, our protagonist, Max
(Omri Katz), is a fairly uninspired character playing the role of ‘non-believer
who encounters the supernatural and ends up a believer’ as well as he can, but
his relationship with his younger sister Dani (Thora Birch) and how it develops
throughout the film is truly adorable. Even more adorable, however, is Dani’s
friendship with talking cat Thackery Binx (voiced by Jason Marsden), a boy
cursed by the Sanderson sisters to live forever as a cat before their execution
in 1693. The pair’s friendship gives Hocus Pocus the wholesome touch that has
become synonymous with Disney films, so much so that it never fails to make me
cry, but perhaps I’m just a sucker for clichés. Another cast member worth a
mention is Doug Jones’ Billy Butcherson, a zombie ex-lover of Winifred (Bette Midler)
cursed to have his mouth sewn shut, who singlehandedly almost cured my fear of zombies.
I would be doing the film a disservice if I failed to
mention the iconic scene in which Bette Midler’s Winifred leads her sisters in
an impromptu performance of ‘I Put a Spell on You’ in my review. The performance
is so great that I truly believe it’s one of the best musical numbers ever put
to film. This scene alone is enough for me to justify giving Hocus Pocus a 4
camera rating.
Hocus Pocus isn’t a perfect film, narratively it’s lacking
and its script can seem forced at times, but the sheer sense of nostalgia it evokes
and how fun it is to watch makes it a classic. With a sequel finally looking
set to begin production, I can only hope that it does justice to this 1993
masterclass on Halloween family films.
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