Starring: Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine (I)

1 out of 10 stars: Bewitched is such an unrelentingly bad, bizarre concoction of a movie that I've been trying to think what kind of taglines they'll use for it in the print ads.

• "As seen on Oprah!"
• "Better than you think"
• "89 minutes!"

• "I got to meet Nicole Kidman!" Shane Morshale, Kansas City Picayune
• "Better than ten other movies that I went berserk over this year!" Jeffrey Lyons, whatever the hell outlet Jeffrey Lyons writes for
• "I just love seeing my byline in the New York Times!" Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
• "A fizzy pop concoction that's sure to please!" Larry King, CNN

That ephemeral, easy-going quality is a hallmark of many films adapted from popular TV shows and it should have worked here. These adaptations seem born of the given headline star's adolescent fondness for the old show (Ben Stiller, Starsky & Hutch) and Bewitched, the TV show, must have inspired thousands, if not millions, of children, to wish that they were Samantha, the witch who marries an unsuspecting mortal. If that's what drew Nicole Kidman to the notion of playing Samantha, she can be forgiven.

One can picture a ten-year-old Kidman, twinkle-twinkle-twink-ing her nose while she imagined the her dolls and toys coming to life. She has an undeniable star quality about her that intermittently shines through the caked on crap that writer and director Nora Ephron has ladled over her.

Yes, Kidman can be forgiven. Will Ferrell, however…

Well, Will Ferrell, first, and most obviously of all, is horribly miscast. He goes with Kidman like caviar and jelly beans, or silk sheets with Teletubbies on them. He's awful. Really bad. A boat anchor.

Ferrell plays Jack Wyatt, a one-time movie star who is trying to refocus his career. Coming off of a string of bombs, including the black-and-white "Last Year in Katmandu," (a genial swipe at Brad Pitt's Seven Years in Tibet) and "Atticus Rex" (a genial swipe at Colin Farrell and Alexander, and other sword-and-sandal misfires). Jack needs a hit, desperately, and he sees the possibility of one in a remake of Bewitched, the Elizabeth Montgomery TV show. Throwing around what remaining celebrity status and power he still has, Jack insists on getting an unknown to play the role of Samantha. He finds her in Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman). Isabel can twitch her nose so well-which seems to be the qualifying factor in the casting decision--that she's almost instantly granted the part of Samantha. What Jack doesn't know is that Isabel is really a witch who is trying to eschew her cauldron-stirring past and settle down to real life. Why has Isabel walked away from her race? We are given no clues though her father (played by Michael Caine) constantly shows up to remind us that she's done just that, with no additional information.

Once production is under way, Jack Wyatt discovers, to his horror, that he is testing poorly with the TV audience while Isabel, who is barely even given lines, is testing through the roof. He continues to marginalize her until she wakes up to the fact that he's a shallow cad and Jack, conversely, realizes he's a shallow cad and wakes up to the fact that he loves Isabel and must win her back.

It's a horrible concept, and director Nora Ephron and her sister Delia Ephron carry out the grim task of building a movie around it; one gets the idea that it wasn't their idea; heaven help them if it was. The "tv show within the film" idea also robs the film of one of the most fertile motifs in the original show, a married couple adjusting--lovingly--to the extraordinary differences between them (and their in-laws). That doesn't exist in this mistake; in its place is a showcase for the dopey antics of Ferrell.

Oddly, Ferrell is allowed to get away with having a running gag that was also prominent in the lackluster sports comedy he did, Kicking & Screaming. In Kicking Ferrell's character becomes addicted to coffee (he'd never, unbelievably, tried it before). His habit gets so bad that he keeps a cappuccino machine on the bench. In Bewitched Jack Wyatt also has his own cappuccino machine installed on set with a "Jack's Cappuccino Machine - Hand's Off!". If this is your idea of setting up a playful calling card, Will, such as Bing Crosby's drinking or Jack Benny's cheapness, it's a bad one.

What's even more surprising, considering that the filmmakers here have as much experience as they do, is that they do such a poor job on the story structure of the film. There are two sequences-two!--that are so outside of the plot and aim of this picture that they are effectively deleted. One "ha-ha, just kidding" is bad enough, but two is indefensible. The first is a sequence where an Aunt Clara-like aunt puts a spell on Jack, causing him to fall desperately in love with Isabel, only for the whole thing to be reversed and another is a DREAM SEQUENCE…a dream sequence of Jack's that, of course, *poof* disappears because it's just a dream.

The editing, here done by Tia Nolan and Stephen Rotter, is an exercise of scooping the meal off of the floor (caviar and jelly beans, at that) and putting it back on the plate. A sub-plot, with Shirley MacLaine as the actress who plays Endora, and also turns out to also be a witch, is entirely dropped. Isabel's next-door-neighbor, played by the ever-watchable Kristen Chenoweth, appears to have been introduced for no real reason at all and we barely get to see the talented actress and instead have to watch Will Ferrell dream sequences where he once again shows his butt. In perhaps the oddest part, Steve Carell plays the TV character Uncle Arthur, even though they've shown clips of Paul Lynde playing Uncle Arthur, as he did on the original show.

In some not-so-distant future, if Nora and Delia do a movie about a comedian who desperately needs a hit after having created one of the worst movies of the summer, they can take a genial swipe at Will Ferrell and Bewitched.