Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

I bought this film for my husband for Christmas this year. We had a copy dubbed from the library (shh, don’t tell the FBI. I know their biggest job right now is hunting down people who copy movies instead of buying them and I don’t want to get caught.) We had watched it several months ago and he mentioned that he’d like to have a better copy of the film. I, in turn, mentioned it to Rox731 who found it on the Internet and asked if I wanted her to get it for me for him.

Then a couple months later I had her run across the street and buy a DVD player for me for him. (Do you get the idea that Rox731 did most of my Christmas shopping for me? She did. Thanks Rox!)

This is why I have the VHS and not the DVD. Eh, what are you going to do?

But about the movie. Gillian (Gil to friends and family pronounced like fish gill, not like Jack and …, Gil is different) runs a groovy little shop selling primitive art and putting her anthropology degree to use. Bully for her. She’s staring out the window of her shop on Christmas Eve talking to her cat Piwacket and lamenting the lack of nice men in her life. Nice normal men. Cue Jimmy Stewart as Sheppard Henderson, as nice and normal as they come. Gil wonders if she could get a normal man the fair way. Did I mention that Gil is a witch? A very gifted witch? She chats up Shep in an effort to get him the normal way, sans witchcraft, when he stops in to use her phone. Then her aunt drops in with bad news. He’s engaged. Drat.

Gil goes out with her aunt to a groovy little witch hang out called the Zodiac. (Gil wears this marvelous red velvet dress which I believed all this time to be black. The price you pay for dubbing library movies.) And who should appear but Shep and the fiancée. The fiancée, Merl (no, no one in this movie has a normal name) is well known to Gil. They lived in the same dorm in college at Vasser or Wellsley or whatever expensive, respected woman’s college they went to. Merl is a witch of a different spelling. She was known in college as a snitch, a liar and a beaux stealer. (It took me a while to catch that. I thought it was bow stealer. I had visions of this woman ripping bows off other girl’s dresses.) And when Shep returns home from his night on the town to tell Gil that he and Merl are getting married tomorrow all her high intentions of getting him the fair way go out the window. She enchants him.

Of course it all goes out the window. There’s a rival witch with a terrible potion, a writer on the prowl to write a book about witches in Manhattan, an escaping cat, and a young Jack Lemmon on bongos. And Gil has a threat hanging over her head. According to rumor, if a witch falls in love she loses her power.

This movie is not a farce. It isn’t just silly from one end to the other. Oh it has very funny moments, but it has very emotional moments too. Like when Gil encounters her brother (played by Jack Lemmon) in Shep’s office after she has charmed his manuscript into being unpublishable. There’s a good deal of fury in Lemmon’s voice. And later, when Shep knows the truth and is moving out, he gives Gil a broom. Her absolute outrage is palpable and Stewart looks completely surprised by her reaction.

I would gladly show this movie to anyone of any age or sensibility. There is no sex. The only violence is done to an African mask which happens to be in the way when Gil throws the broom. And the only curse word is approached from such an odd angle that adults may not catch it right away. This is probably ideal for Harry Potter loving girls.

The only problem I have with the story is that at the end Gil is tamed. In the beginning she's a barefoot, red or black wearing owner of a primitive art shop, at the end she’s a pump and pastel dress wearing owner of a shop that sells tacky seashell "art."

I guess the larger question is: Is she still a witch?


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older