Day 7
In which I accidentally review Hocus Pocus 2
I treated myself to a Disney+ double feature last night: Hocus Pocus and Hocus Pocus 2. If you ever found yourself thinking, “the entire plot of Hocus Pocus falls apart if the teenagers just have cell phones,” Hocus Pocus 2 will prove you wrong.
Listen, does it have the charm of the cult favorite from 1993? Of course it fucking doesn’t. It’s very aware of itself and its place in cinematic history. It isn’t something camp some people made for a laugh and a paycheck. Someone in Hocus Pocus 2 is watching Hocus Pocus for crying out loud! But for a sequel made 30 years later (and one where the main characters have to be resurrected to boot), it’s pretty good! If you want a cute little feel-good movie for Halloween, it’s an amusing addition to any lineup.
Sam Richardson plays a pivotal role in Hocus Pocus 2 as Gilbert, the owner of a local magic store, which I was delighted to learn because he’s been climbing my personal chart of favorite actors since The Afterparty. (That ‘Afterparty’ is rendered as all one word when it is clearly two words is not his fault.) Gilbert (spoiler alert?) creates the means and opportunity for the Sanderson sisters to be resurrected, and we find out that it’s because he’s been obsessed with them since he spotted them on Halloween night in 1993.
I think significant footage was cut from Richardson’s part.* Gilbert mentions that he’d been having a terrible Halloween that night when magic came to life for him, but that storyline is abandoned thereafter. In the end, there’s zero emotional resonance to his actions.** Why did seeing them mean so much to him? Because some kids (Jay and Ice) stole his candy? So what? The Sanderson sisters sure didn’t help him with that.
He believes that the sisters aren’t evil, that they were just misunderstood women ahead of their time—a feminist reading of Salem’s witch history, basically. I dig it. By the time he realizes his mistake, he’s been trapped in to helping them.
Richardson does a great job with the part, but the whole time I kept wondering why Gilbert did any of it to begin with. Gilbert basically sets the stage for the whole movie but we don’t really get to know him at all. The entire time I watched, I kept coming back to his “explanation” for why he tricked the main teenage girls into resurrecting the sisters—why did it matter to him that they came back?**
He was obsessed with them for 29 years! He built his entire life around this—his shop is in the old Sanderson house, and he bought up every Sanderson artifact he could find. Nearly three decades of his life have been dedicated to this moment, so why isn’t there a single line in the whole movie dedicated to telling us why?
To be fair, the plot of the movie works without it. And I haven’t seen a single other review take issue with this gap. But it drove me nuts.
Stories are made richer when every character has an emotional goal they are working toward. In Hocus Pocus, every speaking character does. They are feeling things and acting on those feelings. The Sanderson sisters are terrified of aging, and they want to be young and beautiful forever. Max wants to impress Allison so she thinks he’s cool enough to go out with. Dani wants to feel respected and loved by the big brother she adores. Allison wants to protect Dani and prove to Max that Salem/Halloween/she isn’t stupid. Jay and Silent Bob Ice are bullies because they want power and are too dumb to get it any other way. Et cetera, et cetera.
Why does Gilbert want to resurrect the Sanderson sisters?
*Or maybe I’m being generous and the part just wasn’t as well-written as I would have liked.
**Though this was (clearly) the most egregious to me, there are other issues. Sarah Jessica Parker’s makeup is bizarre, and her costume is inexplicably much sexier than it was in the previous movie, even though she should have been resurrected in the same clothes she died in, like the other Winifred and Mary. Also, the sisters sing a lot? It should have been billed as musical, honestly.
I started the Writer’s Notebook as a 28-day challenge to find joy in writing again. Traditionally, a writer’s notebook is a collection of observations, reactions, ideas, questions, memories, quotes, sketches, lists, snippets of moving language, or some combination of the above. (Sometimes they’re also called Commonplace Books!) Want to join in? Leave a comment below and I’ll check out your work!