Bedazzled *** (2000, Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, Frances O’Connor) – Classic Movie Review 930

Brendan Fraser plays a nerdy, socially awkward IT worker and computer buff who meets up with The Devil, a very seductive Satan. She grants him seven wishes in return for selling his soul, tempting him with the girl of his dreams. Three of his wishes are to be a 7ft basketball star, a powerful rich man and a sensitive caring guy.

Co-writer/producer/director Harold Ramis’s 2000 remake of the old 1967 Peter Cook and Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled is a pleasant surprise. It’s much funnier than expected.

So adept and effortless seeming, Fraser is extremely appealing and amusing, and a well-cast, sizzling-looking Elizabeth Hurley scores a surprise comedy success as The Devil in a red dress.

Ramis, Larry Gelbart and Peter Tolan base their fresh and funny screenplay on the 1967 screenplay by Cook and Moore.

Harold Ramis died on February 24 2014 at age 69 from complications of auto-immune inflammatory vasculitis. He wrote the screenplays of Animal House, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Analyze This and Analyze That.

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