WITCHING & BITCHING

Sometimes when you hear about a synopsis of a film, you just know it is going to be for you.  “Witching & Bitching” was one of those films for me, because any film that starts with street performers dressed as Jesus and a toy soldier, robbing a pawn store, fleeing from police and then taking refuge in a town run by a coven of witches, well, it’s got to be good, right?  Seriously, the film sounds insane and is yet another reason why I prefer to search out foreign films for quality and original content.  While Hollywood is churning out the same unimaginative stuff, year after year, there are films like this one being made elsewhere around the world.  To be fair, I was always going to see “Witching & Bitching” anyway because it is the latest film from director Alex de la Iglesia; a man who seems to be at his best the more crazy and madcap his films are.

After a brief scene setting the witches up as characters and giving a small indication on where the film is heading, De La Iglesia opens his film with one of his imaginative credit sequences where images of witches and women of history are played over the credited performers and staff.  As usual, these credits just ooze quality and set a tone for the rest of the film (and are very reminiscent of the credits of “The Last Circus” which featured images of famous clowns playing over the credits).  The film then starts in earnest and does so in a glorious fashion with the aforementioned robbery which is both excitingly staged and very funny.  The comedy of the scene is due to a number of things.  First, just witnessing a robbery by a gang of street performers is hilarious in itself.  The gang consists of characters such as Minnie Mouse, Spongebob Squarepants, The Invisible Man, and the Toy Soldier and of course, Jesus who appears to be the boss of the gang.  The guy dressed as Jesus, however, has brought his son along to the robbery because it was his day to have him and because he wants joint custody of the child, he did not want to miss his day with the boy and look like a bad father.  Again, this is another hilarious idea but it gets better as Jesus then gets attacked by his victims in the store for his poor parenting techniques.  While the robbery is a success in the fact that they get the gold they were after, it is also a failure with the police being hot on their tails, which then ends up in a shootout during their escape.  Seeing Spongebob getting annihilated in a hail of bullets is yet another funny moment, but my favourite comedic moment of the opening is a brief gag with the Invisible Man as he tries to make his escape.  I honestly had tears in my eyes, it was so funny.  To make their escape, Jesus (along with his son) and the Toy Soldier take hostage a taxicab, and demand the driver drive them to safety.

From here the film changes into a very funny conversational section as all of the men in the cars start bitching about the women in their lives and in general and how they are the cause of the mess that their lives have turned into.  At this point in time, “Witching & Bitching” is clicking on all cylinders.  The black and satirical comedy is so funny and so un-PC, as the five guys all take turns at potting their girlfriends or exes, and from a visual standpoint, de la Iglesia is having a ball.  After the relative calm nature of his previous film “As Luck Would Have It”, it is so good to see de la Iglesia returning to his mad, anything goes style.  Both he and Jorge Guerricaechevarría have come up with a stunning script here, that is very fast paced and wordy.  There were times in the film when the dialogue was moving so fast that it reminded me a little of the screwball comedies from the 30’s and 40’s.  After two films apart, it is so great to have Jorge Guerricaechevarría back where he belongs and working alongside Alex de la Iglesia.  They are a terrific team that when together obviously have boundless imagination, but as well as all of the crazy stuff, they also have the ability to create interesting characters in their films.  During the taxi ride to freedom, we start to learn just who our main characters are and their ultimate motivations for robbing the pawn store.  Jose (who was dressed as Jesus) is the divorced father of Sergio who after paying all the child support he has to, his child’s school fee’s and the like, has little for himself to survive on, so a robbery seemed the only way out for him.  Likewise, Antonio (the toy soldier) feels emasculated by his girlfriend with the two of them appearing to have reversed gender roles in their relationship, to the point that he is terrified to tell her that he lost his job as a bouncer at a strip club after it closed down.  Being as he is unemployed, he also has no money and the robbery was sure to fix that.  Through all this conversation, it isn’t long before Sergio mentions he left his back-pack back at the store, which is full of all his school books that are named, addressed and have a phone number in case they get lost.  So not only are the cops on their tails, they know who was behind the robbery, but worse than that, Sergio’s mother / Jose’s ex is also tracking them down.

During the first two thirds of “Witching & Bitching”, the film is absolutely top-notch entertainment and is the best thing de la Iglesia has done since “The Ferpect Crime”.  The film is brilliantly paced and edited and moves at a cracking pace, but it is the difficult tone that is a mixture of comedy, action and horror that is so impressive and what should have been difficult to pull off.  De la Iglesia has always been a master at conveying this kind of tone and being able to find the comedy in such horrific moments, and he does so here once again.  Visually, the film is also stunning to look at, with de la Iglesia’s regular cinematographer, Kiko De La Rica, providing his usual magic.  The introduction of the witches is also handled very well as is when our group of guys visits their residence for the first time.  Everything is going so well, that I am expecting to have a new favourite Alex de la Iglesia film…..BUT….

Sadly it all falls apart in the final third of the film.  In fact, it is worse than that, this section of the film is absolutely deplorable and destroys all the good that has come before it.  Without going into too much detail, the film ends on a much bigger and epic scale than the rest of the film, and fails miserably.  Suddenly the film is filled with an overabundance of badly rendered CGI and it feels as though De La Iglesia loses control of his own film.  It is hard to even recognize that this final third was made by the same person who made the genius that came before it.  This is the frustration that can come with De La Iglesia sometimes where he can create some absolutely sensational stuff only to undo it all later in the same film.  The same thing happened with “The Last Circus” (though not as drastically as it happened here) when he created a bizarre and entertaining film only to try and end it on a bigger note than was needed, and thus taking the shine off of what came before.  What I am about to say is going to be a little contradictory but I think that Alex de la Iglesia is at his best when the madness he creates is a controlled madness.  While there is no doubt it is the insanity of his films that makes them so popular, I feel that he sometimes loses focus and tries to cram in too much, ultimately affecting the quality of the film.  His greatest films are those that yes, are still insane, but are much more controlled and I am talking particularly about “Common Wealth” and “The Ferpect Crime”.  With the finale of “Witching & Bitching” even his visual style and technique seems to get thrown out the window, with the battle between two witches being particularly poorly staged.  It is also in this section that the pacing of the film and the sharp editing also falls apart and the biggest problems with the script occur, particularly with the sudden change of character from one of the witches.

When it comes to the acting in the film, the majority of it is pretty good.  Hugo Silva is fantastic and very charismatic as Jose, the man with questionable parenting techniques, as is Mario Casas as Antonio, but my favourite performance belonged to Carmen Maura who plays the head witch Graciana.  She is so good and is clearly having a great time playing this less than serious role.  I also enjoyed Carlos Areces in the brief role of Conchi.  However, the performance that came across as just wrong or odd was that of Carolina Bang, who plays the young biker witch Eva.  While she is no doubt a beautiful woman, she comes across as very creepy here, but less scary and more demented, and she seems totally miscast here.  She just didn’t fit into the world that was created here.

Overall, “Witching & Bitching” (great title, by the way) is one of the most frustrating films I have seen in a long time.  The opening two thirds of this film were so good and well put together, I thought we had a new cult classic on our hands.  Sadly once the abomination of the final third is over, that feeling is all but vanished as is the memory of what good that came before it.  This is seriously the worst ending I have seen in a film (that was so great) for a long time, to the point that I think it will be a while before I watch this film again.  If you get a chance to see “Witching & Bitching”, my advice is to get up and leave once you see the guys tied up at the witch’s dinner table, because it is all downhill from there.  “Witching & Bitching” was headed for a 4 star rating minimum, but ultimately the disappointment of the finale has dropped my score to….

3 Stars.