New witches of Eastwick won't last long
Bianca Cain
Issue date: 10/27/09 Section: Arts & Life
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Many remember the 1987 film "The Witches of Eastwick" fondly. Based on a 1984 novel by John Updike, the film tells the story of three women living in Eastwick, Mass., who are dissatisfied with their lives. But when the rich Daryl Van Horne buys a mansion in town and shows an interest in the three women, things begin to change. He begins to seduce each of the three friends, while at the same time revealing their supernatural abilities.
The movie was intriguing and always had you guessing just who Daryl was and what he was in Eastwick for. The TV series tries to accomplish this same thing, yet fails miserably. While the story made a good book and a good movie, it just wasn't cut out for 10+ hours on our TVs.
Rebecca Romijn stars in the series as Roxanne Torcoletti, who is based on Cher's character of Alexandra Medford. Roxanne is a sculptor and a single mother, just like Alexandra, and is developing her ability to see the future.
Lindsay Price stars and Joanna Frankel, who is based on Sarandon's character of Jane Spofford. Joanna is a woman who constantly puts her foot in her mouth when it comes to men. When asked how her day is going, it isn't particularly strange for her to ramble on incessantly until she comes to something completely embarrassing which has nothing to do with the subject, such as talking about her lack of sex life, the size of her breasts and her feelings toward sex toys.
However, viewers have just found that this is all due to the fact that she was left at the alter 10 years ago. Daryl is helping her situation though as he helps her to realize her ability to hypnotize men with her eyes. Unlike Sarandon's character, who worked as a music teacher, Price's character is actually a journalist, one of the few slight changes writers made to original script.
Jamie Ray Newman stars as Kat Gardner, who is based on Pfeiffer's character of Sukie Ridgemont. Whereas Sukie worked as a journalist in the book and film, the series has her working as a nurse. Kat's basic storyline consists of her wrestling through a rough divorce with her longtime, lazy husband while struggling to keep her numerous children in her custody and also slowly coming to realize her gift for manipulating Mother Nature.
Jack Nicholson's character of Daryl is replaced by Paul Goss, and while it's obvious Goss is trying to live up to the award-winning Nicholson, he just can't play the evil-guy role as well as Nicholson can.
Watching the series, you just get the feeling that you've seen this before. Sometimes that's not a bad thing because writers can tweak the script just enough to make it seem new and exciting. Sadly, these writers didn't do such a good job. This is a story we've seen, only 10 times better. Watching an hour of "Eastwick" doesn't do anything for me except to push me to the video store to rent the better version.
Overall, "Eastwick" is only mildly entertaining, with all of the plot twists obvious from two episodes ahead of time, and its attempt at comedy is simply that --- an attempt. Save your time. Just rent the movie instead.
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