Halloweentown 1998

[2.5/10] You don’t always have to get very far into a movie to realize it’s not meant for you. One of the consequences of growing older is you start to identify more with the beleaguered parents telling their rambunctious children “no”, rather than the kids who are sick and tired of having to obey the rules and not just being able to make their own decisions. Halloweentown, after all, a Disney Channel Original Movie. It’s plainly aimed at the kiddie set, and not for crusty old reviewers like me.

Here’s the problem though -- I wouldn’t show this movie to any of the kids I love, because it’s dumb garbage for babies. Maybe it’s suitable for the six and under crowd, with its “Make every scene loud, broad, and annoying,” approach. But given the plethora of better children’s fare out there, even the kind meant for younger kids, I cannot imagine why you would waste a child’s time with this utter dreck.

The movie tells the story of three kids, Marni, Dylan, and Sophie Cromwell, whose mom won’t allow them to celebrate Halloween or so much as sniff anything with a whiff of magic. They follow their more permissive Grandmother home to another world, filled with ghosts and goblins and all things spooky. It turns out both she and their mom is a witch, and the falling out between mother and daughter stemmed from whether to let the kids embrace their spooky roots or fully adopt the mortal realm.

You can see the core of a good idea there. Done well, there could be a strong emotional conflict over the mom’s desire to raise her kids “normal,” the grandma’s hope to teach them about their supernatural family traditions, and the children’s impetuous but understandable desire to learn more about this mysterious part of their family history. More practically, there’s a ton of fun to be had in flitting about a world inhabited by spooks and ghoulies going about their day like regular folks.

Halloweentown fails on both fronts. In terms of the emotional conflict, we never really understand why the mom is so insistent that her kids live as mortals. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop that would account for her strong resistance to her children even knowing about that part of her heritage: some warlock being responsible for her husband’s death, or some time she tried dangerous magic that went too far or something. Anything! Instead, the mom is just insistent that Halloweentown is bad and they should never be witches because...reasons.

It completely neuters the arc here. Of course, the moppets eventually discover their powers and use them to help save both mom and grandma, which makes mom accept both her children and her own mother in a new way. But without knowing why she thought this was bad in the first place, the transition is meaningless. Obviously, this isn’t about the mom. It’s just about the kids wanting to do something, not being allowed to, until they prove they can. That’s fine, I suppose, for the babies this is intended for. But if there was something even slightly more compelling than “I wanna!”/”You can’t!”/”Wait, you can now!”, then the movie might be mildly affecting when the Cromwells use the power of love/family/plot convenience to defeat the bad guy as a family.

The bigger problem, though, is that the kids are just obnoxious. Marni is a little jerk who’s entitled and rude to just about everyone. Dylan is a deluded knowitall who’s constantly correcting people. Sophie is mostly harmless, but the poor young actor's line-reads are about what you’d expect from someone her age. Maybe when you’re in elementary school, this sort of thing is par for the course, but for anyone over the age of twelve, they’re utterly grating.

So is the film’s humor, tone, and whole approach. Everything here is the most idiotic, bargain basement joke you could come up with. Every bit is as hammy as bacon-stuffed pork chop. No character has more than one personality trait, which the movie smashes the audience in the face with at every opportunity. The joke characters, there for pure entertainment, are somehow even more one-note, annoying, and useless. And nothing makes sense, with an “and then” sort of plot where things just sort of happen without much in the way of motivation or cause and effect.

The young target audience is no excuse. You can write a movie for kids, even a T.V. movie, that meets the basic requirements for a story, like, you know, likable characters, basic character motivations, and a plot that makes a modicum of sense. Even the lack of that would be forgivable if Halloweentown weren’t just such a pain from scene-to-scene, with horrid dialogue and rancid comedy that aren’t fit for even the most brain-addled, toddling dullard.

So what’s good about the movie? Debbie Reynolds plays the grandmother, and while she acts for the cheap seats as much as anyone here, there’s some genuine twinkle in her performance that makes it the only truly good one in the picture. While half the titular town looks like they’re dressed in leftovers from a Spirit Halloween shop that was foreclosed upon twenty years ago, there’s some genuinely creative and even impressive prosthetics and puppetry at play. The bad guy, Calabar, is a big waste like everything, but his monster makeup is impressive and even a little scary. And Benny the skeleton cab driver, who at least has the decency to intentionally make bad jokes, is surprisingly expressive and memorable as an effect. Halloweentown has an overall cheap feel to it, but you can tell where they put their money.

Beyond that, the basic premise of the film does buoy the proceedings a bit. Even if you feel like you’re at the discount monster mash at times, and the tepid comic stylings of the locals leave you yearning for the comparatively cutting edge comedy of Yakov Smirnoff, the idea of being a kid wandering through a town of friendy-ish Halloween monsters is an inviting one.

I know this movie pushes the nostalgia button for several folks my age who watched this when they were tykes. And for that reason, maybe Halloweentown is one of those film that actually ought to be remade, because it could capitalize on the good ideas at the core of the movie and the brand recognition that drives modern IP regurgitation, while avoiding the numerous facepalm-worthy pitfalls that leaves this film one to avoid like the gross candies at the bottom of the bucket. Kids now and then deserve better treats, and better than this annoying, cinematic demon dung.