"Teen Witch" was probably made in the wake of "Teen Wolf" but with roughly half the effort put into it. The story follows Louise Miller, a high school girl with seemingly substantial wealth but sub-par popularity because of her tendency to dress like a sister wife and her unsubtle crush on the school's dreamboat named Brad. After the worst day ever, she gets stuck in the rain with a flat bike tire and ends up at the home of Serena, a tiny witch lady who tells Louise that she in one of them and will receive her witch powers on her sixteenth birthday. It's a rough start at first with things happening basically because she wishes for them including for her creepy dance date to go away and an instant where wordplay turns her really unnerving brother into a dog. She gets a necklace from her drama teacher that is apparently the source of her powers and uses it to give her drama teacher a sweet life. She also gives her best friend rapping abilities so she can rap battle the weird boy she likes in probably the most bizarre scene in the whole movie which Adam watched in a state of sheer amazement (see below).
Serena starts lowkey using Louise since her powers are drained or something and gives her a magic book to learn spells from. This movie has absolutely no consistency with how magic works. At one point water makes it disappear. Sometimes you need to say something, sometimes you need to wish for something, sometimes you just need to think it - there's no logic. Either way, Louise considers using magic to make Brad love her but decides not to. She does however, decide to do a massive spell to make her the most popular girl in school. Brad starts to like her anyway and takes her to his creepy murder shack to . . . apparently just kiss. Weird that it wasn't more than that but hey, it wasn't murder. There isn't really a climax so much as Serena gives Louise words of advice ranging from "no one's happy" to the more positive "be yourself" and Louise decides to ditch her magic necklace at the dance, presumably ending the popularity spell as she and Brad dance, although it isn't clear that the spell is broken at all. Maybe she just decides she has all she needs. There's no answer.
This movie is a ride. In a way it can be summed up by a moment in the beginning of the movie where the cheerleaders in the locker room all start dancing around in a choreographed number called "I! Like! Boys!" and Adam turned to Kay and said, "So this is a musical?" and Kay answered, "No." This movie has no idea what it is or what it wants to be. The magic concept, as I said above, is completely unfleshed out. The plot has holes all over the place especially as it relates to character (Why didn't the teacher get fired for stripping? Why didn't Louise ever make up with her best friend? Why is Louise's brother acting like he's the harbinger in a horror movie at all times?). And in addition to the one musical number and the inexplicable rapping trio moments, the entire intro of the movie is basically an 80s music video that goes on way too long until you realize it was just Louise's dream. This movie also reeks of 80s from the clothes to the music to the utter nonsense.
When the film was over we actually had a discussion about it to try to make sense of every dropped element.
This is art. Top that!
Spoon Rating: 8
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