Country: United States
Genre: Comedy/Satire/Fantasy
Director: George Miller
Year: 1987
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Alexandra (Cher), Jane (Susan Sarandon), and Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer) are three single ladies who get together on Thursday evenings to play cards, drink and most of all, talk about men. One night they get drunk and start fantasizing about the perfect man, unwittingingly summoning Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson) to their New England village, the picturesque hamlet of Eastwick. Is Van Horne the answer to their prayers or will he turn out to be the embodiment of male evil?
But forget the plot of The Witches Of Eastwick. That’s not what the film is really about. All of the supernatural stuff and special effects are just window dressing to bring in the crowds.
No, what The Witches Of Eastwick is really about is the battle between the sexes.
The filmmakers have done a great job casting the women, creating three great feminine American archetypes: Cher, the hardnosed feminist; Susan Sarandon, the repressed and passionate artist; and Michelle Pfeiffer, the babymaking machine. These three women are glorious examples of ripe American womanhood. These days, the witches would probably be cast from the ranks of the WB network and be too young to vote.
On the repressed, uptight, side of the ledger, Nancy Cartwright gives a fabulous comic performance as Felicia Alden, Eastwick’s resident moralist.
Jack Nicholson is more of a mixed bag. Nicholson had already reached the stage of his career where he was indulging in self-parody. He plays huge, a leer enveloping his entire face. This isn’t acting, it’s buffoonery. On the other hand, he does have some entertaining moments, like his comic aria, addressed to a Christian congregation, on the subject of women.
On the other hand, maybe it was necessary for the performances to be so broad. Director George Miller, most famous for the Mad Max movies, probably knew that if The Witches Of Eastwick was going to have any chance of being a hit, it needed some blowout special effects sequences. A sly satire on sexual politics wasn’t going to do it. And if the performances were pitched at a human scale, they would have been overwhelmed by the special effects.
Fortunately, The Witches Of Eastwick came out in the days before CGI, so the effects truly are impressive. Director George Miller is tasteful enough to go for a heightened realism, so that when something supernatural occurs, it’s truly thrilling instead of taking you out of the picture.
Thanks to the dictates of the marketplace, The Witches Of Eastwick never really got a chance to be as amusing and insightful as it might have been, but it’s still pretty good middlebrow entertainment.
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