Hocus Pocus (1993)

Apparently Hocus Pocus is like…a big thing for people in my generation? I hadn’t seen it before, corrected by my friends on a decidedly eclectic movie night. 

It’s - look, it’s something else. I think most of the love for it depends on a great deal of nostalgia, which was obviously absent from my viewing - I understood it, but I didn’t have childhood ties to it. It’s extraordinarily campy, which is fun, and Sarah Jessica Parker has truly never reached the same heights as she did in this. Bette Midler heaves the movie on her shoulders and gives it a heightened surreality that it needed to keep it from just veering into ridiculous unhinged levels beyond enjoyability. Any movie that relies this much on child acting is going to be hit and miss, though, and the teenagers are pretty rough to watch as they attempt to save the town from three returned-from-the-”dead” witches. There’s a younger sister character whose actress outdoes everyone else and is very nearly the highlight of the whole thing.

I still don't feel deeply connected to it, but: I get it.

Rating: 6/10 - it’s way more campy fun than a lot of those typical nostalgia flicks for millenials, and thanks to some strong casting and a lack of taking itself too seriously, it holds up okay. Still, watching it through un-nostalgic eyes doesn’t make for a critical darling, even if it’s plenty of fun.