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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Robyn Lively, Zelda Rubenstein, Dan Gauthier
Director: Dorian Walker
Running Time: 94 mins
Teen Witch is an American film about a high schooler who discovers that she’s descended from witches, and sets about using her newfound powers to make her life better.
As much as Teen Witch might seem to promise a fun, light-hearted premise alongside a pleasant helping of ’80s nostalgia, it’s a rather disappointing watch throughout.
Not only lacking the charisma of high school classics from the era, the film misses the mark with its fantasy story, failing to have a nice bit of fun with what should have been a delightfully imaginative premise, instead suffering under predictable and generic romance that needn’t have been such a big part of the story.
Of course, high school movies are nothing without a bit of awkward romance, but Teen Witch is a film that could have really stood out from the crowd.
The ’80s are well-known for their abundance of high school classics, from The Breakfast Club to Sixteen Candles, Teen Wolf and many more, but Teen Witch is a film that unfortunately tries too hard to be a part of that club.
Although eventually getting going after a dull first act with a moderately enjoyable foray into light-hearted fantasy, I found it baffling just how unimaginative this film was when trying to have fun with its main character and her newfound powers.
Unlike Bruce Almighty or even middling comedy Absolutely Anything, Teen Witch is surprisingly dull as it shows its main character experimenting with the ability to do anything she wants. Missing the playful mischief that the premise warrants alongside a real lack of imagination, the movie’s fantasy becomes dull and underwhelming painfully quickly.
And instead, it’s replaced by dull high school romance that’s worlds away from the best Hollywood has ever had to offer. With an uncharismatic love interest and a far-from-stellar lead performance by Robyn Lively, there’s little reason to care about what is at its core a painfully generic and predictable high school love story.
The only thing that sets this film apart from the crowd is a rather heavy-handed and predictable ‘be careful what you wish for’ message. But with such poor imagination and a lack of ideas when showing a teenager experimenting with her apparently unlimited powers, that message is hardly the most relevant or interesting.
Overall, I was really disappointed by Teen Witch. With the potential to be a playful, light-hearted and fun take on typical ’80s high school romance, the film misses the mark entirely as it forsakes its most enjoyable side just to fit into the very genre that it should be trying to change up.
It’s not particularly entertaining, it really lacks imagination, and there’s very little intrigue on the romantic side of things as well. So, that’s why I’m giving Teen Witch a 5.7.
