Review

Remaking the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original is a dangerous proposal at best and this one fails in so many ways. First, all the philosophical and wickedly delicious satire that grounds the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original are ruthlessly thrown out like yesterday's bathwater. There are no conversations, much less witty or intelligent conversations, about the nature of God, the Devil, and man. Either the writers were too dim to *get it*, didn't think the audience would put up with an intellectual dimension or most likely just couldn't top the original script.

Second, I can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to cast a woman as the Devil, much less a beautiful one. The whole point of Fraser's character's bargain with the Devil was to win a girl he was too shy to approach. If you don't see the incongruity of conspiring with a woman who looks like Elizabeth Hurley to win some other woman, I can't explain it to you. Sure enough, even the writers of this dreck woke up one morning and realized, "Hey, Elliot's quite likely to notice that the Devil is more attractive than any other option on his plate!", necessitating a scene where Hurley changes into a HUGE DEVIL, complete with warts, yellow eyes, and the full range of big-budget Special Effects, to squelch THAT idea.

Finally, as another reviewer has noted, Elliot's wishes are just scattershot semi-random stabs at getting himself into a situation he can live with. There's no successive refinement of the wishes to take into account what happened earlier, thus no true matching of wits (the traditional essence of Faust tales) between the Devil and Elliot.

The sets are opulent and the costumes exquisite. Big production values all around. Unfortunately for this empty shell of an imitation, Cook and Moore's original proves yet again that money isn't necessary to make a good movie, but brains are.