The Witches of Eastwick: Review By Err

after having witnessed the "100 greatest movie insults of all time" youtube montage, i updated my queue to include several movies i had either never heard of or never seen, one of which is this little... uh, what's the word i'm looking for... not "gem" exactly.... well, f*ck it... this little gem.

i know nothing of john updike, short of his appearances on the simpsons, but the story had everything it needed except... more.

...more what? f*ck man, i don't know, i'm not a writer, but it seemed like either something was missing or the movie simply dragged out the first two acts a little too long before getting to the supernatural showdown at the end.

at about the 90 minute mark i said to a friend (via text message, upon being asked what i was doing) that i was waiting for the movie to make the leap from "decent" to "awesome" and about 7 minutes later at around the 1:37 mark i sent a follow-up message to say the movie had made the leap.

perhaps awesome was too strong of a word, but memorable, interesting, entertaining, note-worthy... the movie was all of these for sure.

the first 90 minutes sets up the story, familiarizes you with the characters and their individual quirks and idiosyncracies and boasts some fine acting from the likes of richard jenkins, cher, susan sarandon and some standard operating procedure from jack nicholson.

gasp! how dare i imply that jack phoned this one in, but c'mon, this is pretty standard fare for this guy in the period of time it was released. if you want to see jack bust his acting chops out for you go watch one flew over the cuckoo's nest or easy rider or the shining, but if you just want to enjoy jack nicholson in all of his jack nicholsonishness then you go for movies like this.

the last half hour, on the other hand, was what i came for.

i won't get into detail but it is very amusing, and includes special effects that are very impressive for 1987.

i say check it out, but don't be afraid to go make a sandwich while the first 3/4 of the movie makes it way.