With Teen Witch, you can get your friends together who want to get a dose of the 80s - an elephant-size heroin injection of the 80s, complete with Madonna-ripoff soundtrack and single-pig-tail and spandex - and get quite a good many laughs at its expense. Or sometimes with it, but very rarely. It's a film with the intent to put forth the old and very tired cliché: a girl who can't fit in will do stuff to make herself fit in really big, only to discover, color us shocked, that it's really best to just be yourself, maybe, if you're good enough as is. That's the most of a moral I could get out of it anyway. Oh, and if you're a high school girl, the quarterback is always a Tom Cruise clone, I guess, only a little more buff and less creepy.
But man-o-man, get ready for cheese here. And sometimes some weird surprises in the cast. Such as Shelly Berman (who some might recall as Larry David's father on Curb Your Enthusiasm) in a bad hairpiece as the most incomprehensibly bad and nosy teacher ever who gets his just desserts (or too much thereof) with a mojo-doll mock-up of himself by Louise Miller. Or Marcia Wallace basically doing a start-up version of her Mrs. Krabappel character on the Simpsons only as a drama teacher. Or even Dick Sergeant as the father of the household. Best of all is little old Zelda Rubinstein, the perennial little old lady in movies, who is perfect as the mentor witch to Robin Lively's Louise, giving sage advice and sometimes just doing silly things like making cute guys out of frogs. Yeah, one of those old-lady witches.
So, what to expect? Lots of random musical segments, usually complimented by a boombox or stereo nearby, with songs like "I LIKE BOYS!" in a girl's locker room, or with the really shockingly dated and howlingly funny white-guy rapping on the street that becomes a rap-off with Louise's possessed best friend. Oh, and lots of montages, and cruel jokes, and a very stereotypical mean-little brother of Louise's who may in fact be playing it too gay for a kid of pre-pubescent age. And a final prom scene that reeks of silliness and oddly timed romance. And did I mention the 1980's? Be warned, this is so unabashedly of its time and era and locked-in-John-Hughes mode of thought that you'll wonder if it's still the 21st century by the time it ends. Guilty pleasure.
