Hotter than hell!

Aparajita Saha

Be careful about what you wish for because it just might come true.

That's the message Bedazzled comes with.

Now, why does that sound familiar? Maybe because this upright sentiment has already been covered in every moral science classroom in every school in every city in every state.

So, what's different this time round?

For starters, it's the devil himself... err... herself who's doing the preaching. A scantily clad, seductive supermodel devil, with legs that go on forever.

In Bedazzled, director/writer/producer Harold Ramis produces an updated version of the 1967 film of the same name. There is Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser), who is the classic geek. He's socially inept, painfully earnest and seemingly incapable of forming friendships.

He is also lovesick. His object of desire, coworker Alison Gardner (Australia's Frances O'Connor), doesn't even know he exists.

Driven to amorous desperation, Elliot makes a deal with the devil (Elizabeth Hurley). She will grant him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Each wish involves the unattainable Alison and each wish is wickedly sabotaged by the endlessly creative Luciferess.

Bedazzled covers Elliot's quest for the perfect combination of love, riches and fame, which lands him in a gamut of some hilarious and some not so hilarious guises: He's a Colombian drug lord, a seven-foot-tall basketball star, a sensitive poet, an intellectual writer, and a famous American president.

Fraser (George Of The Jungle, The Mummy) had made a surprisingly successful career out of portraying the easygoing nice guy persona. But he jars in his overwrought facial expressions and he isn't nearly as amusing as he seems to think he is.

Frances O'Connor lacks sparkle and looks suspiciously like Mariah Carey through most of the film.

And although she is no great actress, it's Elizabeth Hurley who lends the dazzle to Bedazzled. She's hotter than the fires of Hell with her posh British accent, air of worldliness, sooty kohl-lined eyes and perfectly outlined pout.

One would have expected a bottomless barrel of laughs from Director Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters, Analyze This), who coadapted the script with Larry Gelbart (Tootsie) and Peter Tolan (Analyze This) but all we get is a lukewarm comedy with done to death stereotypes about gays, jocks and sensitive men.

The only reason for seeing Bedazzled would be the testosterone-stimulating Hurley.

But beware of the side effects -- breathlessness, dizziness and jaw ache from mouths that are agape...

You have been warned.

CREDITS
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, Frances O'Connor, Orlando Jones, Lou Ferrigno
Director: Harold Ramis
Producers: Harold Ramis, Trevor Albert
Writers: Larry Gelbart, Harold Ramis, Peter Tolan
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox

Related links
Bedazzled
Brendan Fraser
Elizabeth Hurley