Bedazzled (2000 film)

Bedazzled is a 2000 motion picture remake of the (1967) film Bedazzled, originally written by Peter Cook. It was directed by Harold Ramis and stars Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. The movie won the 2001 Golden Trailer award for Best Title Sequence.

Plot

Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser) works a dead-end job in a call-center in San Francisco and has no real friends. He has a crush on his colleague, Alison Gardner (Frances O'Connor), but lacks the courage to ask her out. After Elliot is ditched at a bar while trying to talk to Alison, he makes a wish that he would give anything for Alison to be with him. The Devil (Elizabeth Hurley), in the form of a beautiful woman, hears this wish and offers Elliot a contract. She will give Elliot seven wishes, and in return Elliot will give her his soul.

As might be expected of a bargain with Satan, there is a catch to the deal. No matter what Elliot asks for himself, the Devil grants his wish in such a way that he is invariably unhappy with the result,

• As a test wish, he wishes for a McDonalds Big Mac and a Coke. The devil takes him to McDonalds and places the order on his behalf. Elliot has to pay for it, because as the saying goes, "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

After taking Elliott to her nightclub in Oakland in her black Lamborghini Diablo, the devil gets Elliott to sign her substantial contract, and delivers his further wishes:

• He wishes to be rich and powerful, with Alison as his wife. The Devil makes him a Colombian Drug Lord whose wife despises him and is having an affair with her language tutor- pointing out that he never wished for Alison to be in love with him-, and whose business partners are about to double-cross and murder him.
• He wishes to be emotionally sensitive. The Devil makes him so sensitive he spends much of his time crying at how beautiful the world is. Alison then contradicts herself and says she wants to be with a man who is strong and shallow.
• He wishes to be a superstar athlete. The Devil makes him an unstoppable seven-foot-plus tall basketball star, but gives him an extremely small penis and equally low IQ (as evidenced by a limited vocabulary), which causes Alison to lose interest in him.
• He wishes to be intelligent, witty and well-endowed. The Devil grants this by making him a famous writer who is actually a homosexual, co-habiting with a male partner.
• He wishes to be President of the United States. The Devil makes him Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination.

After each wish is renounced (by dialing 666 on a pager), Elliot returns for a meeting with the Devil in which she blames him for not being specific enough in his desires and prompts him to try again. These meetings take place in a variety of locations, with the Devil each time in a different role, in which she carries out a variety of everyday evil acts - dismissing a class full of students from their lesson without any homework other than to remember not take any interest in being educated, swapping the medication on a hospital trolley for candy (although she explains that those were placebos), forcing parking meters to expire, and writing tickets for parked cars. The roles she plays (teacher, nurse, police officer, cheerleader) can be viewed as objects of typical male sexual fantasies. In one of the deleted scenes she also wears a French maid outfit.

Eventually he goes back to work, taking time to think on what would be best to do with the two last wishes. The devil points out that on their first meeting he asked for a Big Mac and Coke. This counts against his total, leaving just one wish remaining.

Then he goes to a church looking for God's help, where he briefly confesses to a priest who's willing to help. Just as soon as he's finished, he's seen being taken out of the church by cops. The sergeant decides to book him, and the Devil is now dressed and acting as the cop who gets to take him to jail. That's where he meets an angel (Gabriel Casseus), who tells him that he cannot possibly sell his soul as it belongs to God rather than him. Elliot returns to the Devil and asks her to cancel their contract. When the Devil refuses, Elliot states that he will not use up his final wish. However, there is also an expiration date for the wishes, and The Devil angrily teleports both Elliot and herself to her domain, Hell - which later on in the film she says it wasn't Hell...it was the Universal Studios, where she transforms first into a black horned monster, then into an enormous giantess, who is much bigger than the terrified Elliot in comparison. When the Devil pushes him to make a final wish, Elliot blurts out that he wishes that Alison could have a happy life. The giantess devil heavily sighs and then falls into a million pieces, Elliot falling into the depths of 'Hell'. Elliot wakes up on a marble staircase, wondering if it is Heaven. The devil tells him that it is merely a courthouse and that, by the terms of his contract, a selfless wish voids the entire deal, so he gets to keep his soul.

Before they part ways Elliott admits that despite her manipulation of him he has come to like the Devil and regards her as a best friend, something she does not object to. She simply says that Heaven and Hell can be found on Earth. It's up to the humans to choose. This implies that the Devil may simply just be another agent of God, sent to tempt humans, but otherwise just another servant of Him. This is further reinforced when she is seen playing a friendly game of chess with the angel from the jail cell (In spite of the fact that, while his back is turned, she attempts to alter the pieces, but gets caught when he quickly turns his head around).

Elliot finally approaches Alison directly and asks her out, only to find that she is currently dating somebody. He accepts this with good grace and continues with his life, soon meeting a new neighbour, Nicole Delarusso (also played by Frances O'Connor), with whom he enters a relationship. This may imply that giving a wish away may bring a person even more happiness than what their wishes would bring. As the character Elliot mentions before making his final wish "Wishing does not work. It is not important how far we get in life, it is the way we get there that matters".

The movie closes to the lyrics of "Change Your Mind" by Sister Hazel.

Main cast

• Brendan Fraser as Elliot Richards / Jefe /"Mary"/ Abraham Lincoln
• Elizabeth Hurley as The Devil (Satan)
• Frances O'Connor as Alison Gardner / Nicole Delarusso
• Orlando Jones as Daniel / Dan / Danny / Esteban / Beach Jock / Lamar Garrett / Dr. Ngegitigegitibaba
• Paul Adelstein as Bob / Roberto / Beach Jock / Bob Bob
• Toby Huss as Jerry / Alejandro / Beach Jock / Jerry Turner / Lance
• Miriam Shor as Carol / Penthouse Hostess
• Gabriel Casseus as Elliot's Cellmate
• Brian Doyle-Murray as Priest
• Jeff Doucette as Desk Sergeant
• Aaron Lustig as Synedyne Supervisor
• Rudolf Martin as Raoul
• Julian Firth as John Wilkes Booth

Deleted wish

On the DVD for Bedazzled among the special features there is a deleted scene depicting Elliot Richards wishing for and becoming a Rock Star.

References

External links