Joey Zimmerman | Through the Shattered Lens

We’ve reached the end of the Halloweentown movies. I love how the trivia section for this movie on IMDb says that “Kimberly J. Brown has publicly stated her disappointment with the recasting of her role for unknown reasons even though Brown was fully available for the shoot.” Unknown reasons?

Hmm…flip her around.

Yeah, unknown reasons. Seriously, they parade Sara Paxton around at the beginning of this movie just to make sure you know they got a girl with tits, ass, and a slinky figure. I’m sure there were other reasons as well, but the Disney Channel does like to hire these kinds of girls. That’s not to say that I don’t like actresses such as Dove Cameron, Bella Thorne, or Debby Ryan, but they all share something in common aside from being entertaining. And let’s be fair to Sara Paxton, this movie wasn’t going to work anyways. Even if they had cast Brown in the role. Paxton isn’t a bad actress either. She’s just cast against type. When the three Sinister sisters show up to harass Paxton, Paxton looks like she should be with them. If they wanted to have Paxton in the movie, then they should have condensed the three Sinister sisters into one character who is sweet and kind, but ultimately evil, and cast Paxton in that part. She seems like she could have nailed that role. Let’s talk about the movie.

After we see some scary things such as a pumpkin, a gargoyle, and Sara Paxton, we see the most terrifying thing of all.

And if I didn’t know that there is a scene later in the movie where Reynolds is physically in the same room with Paxton, then I’d say that she is in this movie the way Pierre Kirby is in Movie A within a Godfrey Ho film.

Luckily, hot mom played by Judith Hoag returns who by the way played the original April O’Neal in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). It’s funny that they replaced a girl like Hoag with Megan Fox, just like they replaced Kimberly J. Brown with Sara Paxton.

Joey Zimmerman also returns as the brother who only exists to be a smartass. But what about that younger sister that made such an impression on me that I don’t think I even mentioned her existence in my reviews of the other films? Yeah, they wrote her out of the movie. Now it’s off to Witch’s University in Halloweentown.

At least the cab driver makes an appearance in this movie. But they can’t even get him right. His face doesn’t move properly. I don’t remember his face making that much bone on bone noise. And I certainly don’t remember his jokes being so lame. Oh, well. We now arrive at Hogwarts…I mean Witch’s University where we meet the main villain of the movie named Silas Sinister.

That’s all well and good Silas, but I’ve seen Monster High and this guy has a much more impressive title.

This is when Paxton runs into the three Sinister sisters.

We can tell they’re evil not because they are rejects from Mean Girls (2004), but because they are desperately trying to make you forget that Paxton is miscast by acting over the top bad. Then we meet totally not Lucius Malfoy.

He informs Paxton that use of magic on campus will be grounds for immediate dismissal. As we find out, it’s Paxton’s fault. As you may recall, Marnie was bragging that she opened the portal between the real world and Halloweentown at the beginning of Halloweentown High. That resulted in a bunch of students from Halloweentown going to real world colleges. As a result, Witch’s University needed to increase enrollment so they opened it up to creatures other than witches. To level the academic playing field, witches are not allowed to use magic. We find this out when we meet Paxton’s Resident Advisor (RA) who is a genie.

I had an RA that was a gay business major who was followed by an Apartment Assistant (AA) that was an optometrist when I went to college. But I guess if they had her twitch her nose in one scene to get in a reference to Bewitched, and they’ve referenced everything else, then throw in I Dream Of Jeannie as well. Two more pieces of setup before I can leap over the rest of this nonsense, which includes time travel again. Yeah, because that part was clearly the best part of Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge.

That’s Paxton’s boy toy for this movie.

And that’s what the rest of the movie revolves around. Basically, Paxton is extremely powerful, and a group called the Dominion wants to use her to rule over the world. The rest of the movie is about that, which includes a scene where Paxton goes far back in time to find an old queen played by herself who becomes the Debbie Reynolds character. And how does it end?

Well, how do you think it ends? The same way as the others. The Cromwell witches use their magic to allegedly destroy the special amulet thingy that is like the ring from The Lord Of The Rings. They even directly reference Charmed again by having Paxton say “by the power of 3” before she, Hoag, and smartass brother do their thing. And yes, I said “allegedly” because they didn’t actually destroy it, but hid it away in case they wanted to make a sequel.

Actually, even though this didn’t work, I could’ve gotten behind a sequel where the brother turns evil. I mean they already used the term the Dominion and one of the things that made Star Trek: Deep Space Nine great is how long they spent slowly building up the ultimate war between the Federation and the Dominion. It could have been neat to see this character that was simmering on the back burner come to the forefront. Oh, well.

As you might have already noticed, this thing was doomed. One, shows or franchises that make the jump to college are the exception, not the rule. There is far too much upheaval that occurs when you do that. Two, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch was off the air, Charmed had worn out it’s welcome, and Harry Potter had just cranked up the maturity level to the point where kids not only could, but did die in that universe. It was also dominating the kids at a magic school thing in 2006, which this tried to compete with. The Disney Channel couldn’t compete. Sure Wizards of Waverly Place came out the next year, but that didn’t try to do the Harry Potter thing. Finally, the first film was a fluke, the second film fixed the problems of the first, and the third film should have spawned a TV Show, but didn’t. This just wasn’t going to happen.

Ultimately, a disappointing end to a reasonably enjoyable series of Halloween themed movies. Now I just need to watch those two Twitches movies before they expire at the end of this month.

This is definitely my favorite of the Halloweentown movies I have watched so far. Yes, it comes across as a failed TV Show pilot, but I still enjoyed it more than the first two. I can’t believe it took me this long to really appreciate him, but the character of Marnie’s brother named Dylan Piper (Joey Zimmerman) is great.

He has a little bit of a subplot in this, but basically his character exists for the sole purpose of being a smartass in these movies. I like that.

The film opens up with Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown) acting liked she cured cancer or something by opening up the portal between the human world and Halloweentown. Up till now that was only open on Halloween. Now two way travel is possible all the time so that this film doesn’t have to re-hatch the plot of the first two films, but can continue really being about accepting people who are different from yourself. Since it seems all these movies or TV Shows with witches must have a council that the character is dragged before…

They really only exist so that there is some sort of thing on the line if Marnie’s dream of having some kids from Halloweentown attend a human high school fails. In this case, she loses her magic. And of course the deadline is midnight on Halloween. So there’s your setup.

Then since Debbie Reynolds will be damned before she’ll be upstaged by Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, which actually had Coolio in it, she references one of his most famous music videos. She pulls an endless stream of kids out of a VW Bug. For those of you too young to remember. Here’s Coolio’s cover of Fantastic Voyage.

Reynolds also comes with a living purse.

Yeah, screw you lady from Smart Cookies and your purse big enough to hold a severed head. Reynolds purse doubles as an attack dog. Reynolds not only arranged for the kids from Halloweentown, I mean Canada as there cover story says, to attend the school, but she is going to teach there too. Thankfully, they do next to nothing with that because the one scene where she really does that is embarrassingly bad.

There is a special locker through which the kids from Halloweentown can travel that acts as a lounge where they don’t have to wear their human costumes. This is when a short little part caught my ear. I even had to rewind it to make sure I heard it correctly. It’s not emphasized or anything, but it’s a nice little subtle touch. One of the girls talks about an experience she had with two “cheer leaders”. She says it the same way someone who isn’t from the human world would. Something like this isn’t too unusual in a movie with a plot like this, but it’s done with so little emphasis that you could miss it. It’s like when I notice a Hallmark movie that properly fakes a computer screen. Realistically, most of them don’t show the screen long enough for it to really need to be done with authenticity, but it shows they cared enough to get it right. That’s how this felt.

In this one Marnie has a romantic interest again. Or I should say there’s a guy who likes her, but the poor dude keeps getting screwed over by the plot when all he wants is to ask her out. She likes him and everything. She gets her metaphorical erection the moment he shows up, but the plot just keeps getting in the way.

As you can guess, the rest is mostly about acceptance. However, you need a villain. They come in the form of what are called knights. Just imagine one of those last episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise where Peter Weller tries to stop the creation of the Federation just before it’s formation. They want to keep the human world and Halloweentown separate and close the portal forever. This part takes a bit of a backseat to the whole getting along thing and only really pops up so that we can have a confrontation at the end.

This guy is the main baddy and I love this scene where he manifests himself at a Halloween fair the kids are having. Even before it happens, you know instantly that Debbie Reynolds is not going to have any of this man’s shit (excuse my language). And you’re right because she immediately smacks him down with her magic. I loved that.

Ultimately, it comes down to referencing Charmed by having the three Cromwell witches imprison the bad guy inside of a mirror. Then Marnie finally has nothing to get in her way of getting a little, so she takes the guy who has been trying to ask her out for a ride on her broomstick.

I honestly expected this to be worse than the previous two, but I really did enjoy this more. I still have to see the fourth one, but yeah, if you are going to watch these, then feel free to jump right to this one.