Aaron Lustig | Through the Shattered Lens

Elliot (Brendan Fraser) has a go-nowhere job at a computer company and an unrequited crush on Alison (Frances O’Connor), a co-worker who doesn’t even know who he is. One night, at a bar afterwork, he’s approached by the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley), who offers Elliot seven wishes in return for his soul. Elliot agrees but then he discovers that the Devil is tricky and his wishes always have an complication. Elliot wants to be powerful so the Devil turns him into a Columbian drug lord. Elliot wants to be sensitive and the Devil turns him into a whiny crybaby. Elliot wants to be president and suddenly, he’s Abraham Lincoln being told to get ready for the theater. Whenever things start to get too dangerous, the Devil brings Elliot back to reality so that she can continue to taunt him.

An Americanized remake of a British comedy that starred Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, Bedazzled was unfairly savaged by the critics when it was first released. While it can’t match the wit and heart of the original and not all of the wishes are equally effective, the remake has its charms. When Bedazzled first came out, most people talked about Elizabeth Hurley’s sexy performance of the Devil. When she appears as a school teacher, it’s not a surprise that every student brings her an apple at the start of the day. Hurley is so sexy that it’s easy to miss that she’s also giving a really good performance. Hurley’s Devil is a prankster. She likes to steal souls but mostly, she’s just having fun ruining all of Fraser’s wishes. Brendan Fraser is likable as Elliot and the way he responds to each wish gives him a chance to show off his comedic skills. Finally, the movie has a good ending, with Elliot growing up and realizing the truth about his crush on Alison.

Bedazzled may not be up to the level of some of director Harold Ramis’s other films but it’s still better than its reputation.

An accident at a laboratory renders stock analyst Nick Holloway (Chevy Chase) invisible. CIA agent David Jenkins (Sam Neill) wants to recruit Nick to be an assassin but Nick doesn’t want to kill people. He just wants to make his date with Alice (Daryl Hannah). With Jenkins and his agents in pursuit, Nick flees to a beach house belonging to his friend George (Michael McKean) and tries to figure out what to do with his life now that no one can see him. Fortunately, Alice is staying at the beach house too. Nick and Alice fall in love but Jenkins is close behind.

Based on a science fiction novel by H.F. Saint, Memoirs of an Invisible Man started out as a vanity project for Chevy Chase, who felt that the film’s mix of comedy and drama would establish him as a serious actor. The project went through a series of directors, including Ivan Reitman and Richard Donner, but in the end no one wanted to work with the special effects necessary to create the impression of invisibility and, even more importantly, no one wanted to work with Chase. When the film was finally offered to John Carpenter, he was reluctant to do another studio film because of his bad experience with They Live. He finally agreed because it had been four years since his last film.

The special effects in Memoirs of an Invisible Man are still impressive and the chase scenes show off Carpenter’s abilities as an action director. The movie flopped with critics and audiences but that was not Carpenter’s fault. Carpenter keeps the story moving and gets good performances out of Sam Neill and even Daryl Hannah. The problem with the movie is that Chevy Chase is miscast as an action hero and he tries too hard to give a serious performance. Carpenter later said he wanted to add more comedy to the film and to emphasize Chase’s talent for physical comedy but Chase refused to do so. Chase also resented wearing the blue bodysuit that would be used to render him invisible onscreen and often removed the suit early, ruining whatever else Carpenter had planned to shoot during the day. You can add John Carpenter to the long list of directors who have said they will never work with Chevy Chase again.

One good thing did come out of Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Carpenter met and enjoyed working with Sam Neill. (Memoirs of an Invisible Man probably would have worked better in Neill and Chase had switched roles.) Neill would go on to star in Carpenter’s next film, In The Mouth of Madness.