Bedazzled

You'd think an industry in which selling one's soul is a standard practice could come up with a funnier comedy on the Faustian bargain. This remake of the 1967 Dudley Moore/Peter Cooke/Stanley Donen has little of the (overrated) original's subversive lunacy. It does have Brandon Fraser, meatily buffoonish as Elliot Richards, a hapless good-hearted computer nerd mocked by his colleagues and in love with Alison Gardner (Frances O'Connor), who doesn't know he exists. Enter the Devil (a ribald Elizabeth Hurley), who offers him the standard seven wishes in exchange for his soul. He orders the usual -- riches, power, fame, sensitivity, athletic prowess and, of course, Alison. And the Devil gives him his due, with the predictable worm ruining the apple. It's a surprisingly perfunctory outing from co-writer/director Harold Ramis -- you'd think the creator of Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters would have had more fun with the metaphysics of good and evil, illusion and desire. And what's the point of making the Devil a sexpot if nothing comes of it? When she asks poor Elliot whether he can explain what his soul is, he's at a loss. So is this movie. At the Flagship, Hoyts Providence Place 16, Showcase, Starcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
-- Peter Keough