This is a Disney channel original movie celebrating how much fun Halloween should be, and so I've wanted for years to see it, even though I'm way older than the target audience. The best kids movies can be enjoyed by adults too, after all. That's what I told myself as I pressed the "play" button on this movie, and I hoped for the best (anything has to be better than the gooky mess that was Hocus Pocus 2).
This movie is about a thirteen year old girl named Marnie, who finds out on her thirteenth birthday that she's a witch with a long family history of magic and witchy things (on her momm's side of the family, as her dad was a human). She follows her grandmother through a secret portal into Halloweentown, a magical land that is being tormented by a dark evil that only Marnie and her family can fight. Marnie's mother doesn't want Marnie to follow her witchy destiny, she wants to honor her dead husband's human side of the family, so she is resistent to the idea of Marnie fulfilling her destiny, and this makes for a lot of tensionn throughout the movie. Marnie's mother never even told her she was a witch, and she's spent years trying to hide Marnie's powers from her. Will Marnie's mother comme around and allow Marnie the freedom to be the witch she's meant to be? Will the evil curse that's stalking Halloweentown ever be stopped? Will Marnie's little brother ever stop being a mouthy little twerp and actually help his family save the day?
I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge or the Halloween Grinch right now. This is another movie that I've been wanting to see for a long time that ended up being a huge disappointment. I realize that the movie is for kids, so I'm not exactly the target audience, but as I said before, the best kids movies can be enjoyed by adukts as well, and this just seems too cheesy and silly and not in a fun way but in a depressingly boring way. The effects are dismally low-rent even for a made-for-TV movie, so I wasn't inmpressed. All the ghosts and ghouls and werewolves look like extras in costumes, which un-suspends my disbelief before it even has a chance to get going. I did find the family drama to be intriguing. Marnie's mother pissed me off with her attitude. I get it lady, you want to honor your human husband's memory and traditions, but your magical side of the family is important too, and right now they're under attack by an evil curse that you can help stop, so get over yourself and go help your mom out.
I wasn't kidding about Marnie's little brother, he is really a mouthy little twerp for most of the movie and he spends most of his time getting in the way and trying to get Marnie in trouble. I suppose this is the most realistic aspect of the movie, since that's exactly what a lot of younger siblings would do, but it gets annoying, especially since I was already waiting for the mom to get her head out of her butt and decide to let her daughter fulfil her witchy destiny. This family is frustrating. Overall, once the mother comes around and decides to let her daughter do her own thing it is kind of touching, I just wish the movie weren't so cheesy and silly and obviously low-budget. I'm reminded of movies that I loved growing up, like Mr. Boogety and Bride of Boogety, which were Disney halloween movies that I actually saw when I was a kid and therefore part of the target audience, and I really loved those movies and I dn't remember them being this ridiculous, but that could just be because I was a kid when I first watched them so I didn't see the low-budget crappiness as much as I would as an adult. Though this was definitely better than Hocus Pocus 2 for me, I was still disappointed.
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