reMedia!

An entertainment blog that pops culture right in the kisser.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

film | Magic: The blathering

THE COVENANT is what happens when you toss the Book of Shadows, an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, and a paint-by-numbers activity page into a paper shredder, then tape the resulting odds and ends into a script that must've been greenlit in a top-secret joint venture between the Sci-Fi Channel and the Logo network: See hot male witches. See hot male witches strut around in speedos and as little else as the PG-13 rating allows. See hot male witches interact homoerotically. See — well, hear — hot male witches employ nonsensical occult jargon like "ascension," "darkling" and "book of damnation." See hot male witches shoot magic blasts from their fingers. See good hot male witch defeat bad hot male witch and save hot female non-witch girlfriend in the process. Run, audience, run!

There's not a single original idea floating around this leaden supernatural clunker. Its anti(?)-heroes — the "Sons of ipswich," four preppy warlocks (Sky High's Steven Strait plays the personality-lite leader of the pack) who descended from a secret coven that managed to survive 1690s Salem — are kinda-sorta a himbo spin on the Wiccan clique from 1996's The Craft, and the simplistic parallels drawn between the abuse of their magic and drug addiction isn't anything that the sixth season of Buffy didn't stage with more imagination and resonance. The film alleges that when a witch uses his powers, it prematurely ages him, which might be a detail tacked onto the screenplay to explain why most of its alleged high school students look 25. But come on, they're doing sorcery in practically every scene — on themselves, on SUVs, on the skirts of hottie classmates (all levitation spells, of course). Shouldn't they resemble Strom Thurmond?

Director Renny Harlin has a knack for parlaying even the most ridiculous scenarios into entertaining funhouse thrillers (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea), but here he's tethered to a story treatment that veers between botched camp and sleepy teen-soap melodrama, with oodles of ho-hum jolts — creepy-crawlies, scary faces, it-was-just-a-nightmare-isms — dimming the derivative way. Also, the dialogue is quite stiff when it's not striving for a place in the awkward-pop-reference hall of fame; "How 'bout i make you my wee-yotch?" taunts one young wizard, and another effuses that "Harry Potter can kiss my ass!" after an especially nifty trick. Witch, please. Your wand ain't got nothin' on his. D

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