“I can already tell this is going to be awful,” The Boy said as Hocus Pocus started.

I couldn’t help but agree.

Especially since Bettle Midler is in it and I’ve never been a fan of her. Ever. Like..really..ever (if I hear Wind Beneath My Wings again I will scream. It was so overplayed “back in the day), but in recent years I’ve liked her even less.

But, the initial impressions aside, I can see why fans of silly spooky movies would like it. It just wasn’t my thing really, which I knew within the first five minutes.

I just wanted it to end, and it had only started.

And I was feeling guilty because Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs loves movies and books like this and I want Erin to like me (please, please like me even if I’m not a fan of spooky movies!). We are watching movies for “spooky season,” in case you are new here.

So far we have watched Clue, The Addams Family, and Shaun of the Dead.

I soldiered on through the cheese and the silliness and clueless parents of Hocus Pocus to see if it would get any better.

We did and found it interesting that some of the movie was actually filmed in Salem and surrounding towns near it.

That’s about all we found interesting because we cringed through the rest of it.

The Boy kept pausing the movie to complain about it and I told him to stop prolonging our misery.

Comments uttered by one or the other of us during the movie:

The Boy: “He just threatened to hang a child from a telephone pole.”

The Boy: “Did she really just tell that girl her brother likes her boobs.”

Both of us: “They said the thing! Hocus Pocus!”

Me: “All it took was lighting a candle to bring them back and they’re telling me that no other teenager in 300 years had tried to light the candle? No! Just in 1993!”

Me: “This acting is 90210 bad.”

The Boy: “If you rhyme one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to pull  your hair out.”

The Boy: “This movie is just bad in every way possible.

Zombie comes up. The Boy: “It’s Michael Jackson!”

The boy: You’re telling me they put wiring and a plumbing system in this house? Took all the stuff out and then put it back exactly as it was?”

The Boy: “I would rather listen to Wonderwall on repeat for the rest of my life than continue to watch this movie.”

The Boy: “This movie just likes to pull stuff out of its butt.”

The Boy: “I understand why alcoholism exists now. It’s just to numb the pain of this movie.

Me: “What is happening right here? Why is she on his lap?”

The Boy: “Now we have a pervert bus driver who I wouldn’t allow within a thousand miles of my children.”

The Boy: “Best character, Sonic.” (Kid in the background dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog. )

The whole 90s obsession with kids who were still virgins at the age of 16 being “uncool” or “abnormal” is completely at play here, as with many 90s movies. I always found it incredibly disturbing how Hollywood always tried to push the idea that teenagers should already be having sex and if they weren’t they were “losers.”

Anyhow, in the end, we agreed with the Rotten Tomatoes consensus:

“Harmlessly hokey yet never much more than mediocre, Hocus Pocus is a muddled family-friendly effort that fails to live up to the talents of its impressive cast.”

And also this review by Johanna Steinmetz of the Chicago Tribune: Hocus Pocus is harmless, but it’s about as much fun as celebrating Mardi Gras under the influence of candy corn.

Up next in our Spooky Season Cinema:

Young Frankenstein

The Nightmare Before Christmas (this is replacing Transylvania 6500, which we decided we just couldn’t watch)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Classic Creature Feature)

Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Johnny Depp version)

And Halloween from 1979.

Read Erin’s take on Hocus Pocus HERE.