Thou wilt have a perfectly OK time with the Bette-middling ‘Hocus Pocus 2’
By one of those concurrence that leads me to suspect necromancy — or maybe just the more banal dark magic of social media — this week has renewed some heated online chatter
about the dubious artistic patrimonies of two veritably different pictures. One of them is James Cameron’s 3- D awe “ icon ”( 2009), which lately returned to theaters
as a warm-up act for “ Avatar The Way of Water. ” That soon- to- arrive effect will test some of the further patient put campo of the first “ icon,
” videlicet that it was a rare box office drive with a negligible pop-artistic imprint. It was an event movie that everyone saw, the argument goes, but many really loved.
The other movie is the family-friendly supernatural comedy “ Hocus Pocus ”( 1993), which, like “ Avatar, ” has now spawned a long- awaited follow- up. But unlike “ Avatar, ”
“ Hocus Pocus ” set no box office records on release, broke no technological ground and entered substantially indifferent to hostile reviews. The 10- time-old me who saw it in
theaters ( and innumerous times subsequently on VHS) would have supplied one of the further enthusiastic notices, won over by its wanly funny-spooky vibes, its now- creaky visual
goods and the shrieky fellowship of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker as the Sanderson Sisters,
a triad of 17th- century New England witches with a taste for youthful children and archaic alternate- person-singular pronouns.
Mini-me also would have been delighted by the prospect of an effect, if dissatisfied to hear it would take nearly 30 times to get off the ground.