The Witches (PG)
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This 1990 film is based on the 1983 novel of the same name, by Roald Dahl, which I haven't read. I think I saw the movie at some point, I have no idea when, but I didn't really remember anything about it by the time I watched it again in 2025. I debated whether to put my review under "family horror" or just "supernatural", because I didn't really find it scary. But maybe young children would, and it is after all a children's movie. So I went with the former category.

At the start of the movie, a young American boy named Luke is visiting his grandmother in Norway with his parents. She tells him stories about witches, who she says hate children. Then one day Luke's parents die in an accident, and he moves with his grandmother to her house in England. She gives him a pair of white mice for his birthday. Then she has a fainting spell brought on by diabetes. Her doctor recommends spending some time by the sea, so they go to stay at a hotel run by Mr. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson). There, Luke meets a boy named Bruno. And at one point, Luke takes his mice to play in a conference room, when suddenly a bunch of women come in for a meeting, led by Eva Ernst (Anjelica Huston). While Luke hides and watches them, the women all take off their disguises. It turns out they're witches, and Eva is the Grand High Witch, the leader of all the witches in the world. She's disappointed in the witches of England, because there are so many children in the country. So she shares with them a plan to turn all the children into mice. She demonstrates by turning Bruno into a mouse. At the end of the meeting, they notice the smell of a child nearby, and begin searching for him. Eventually they catch Luke and turn him into a mouse, as well. Then Luke and Bruno make their way to Luke's grandmother's room, and they come up with a plan to defeat the witches.

And I guess that's all I want to say about the plot. I thought the movie was okay, but not really great. Maybe I would have liked it more if I'd seen it as a child, I don't know. If I did see it sometime before now, it would have been when I was at least a teenager, so older than the target audience. Oh, I did want to mention the Grand High Witch's assistant, who was played by Jane Horrocks (who I know from Absolutely Fabulous as well as voice work in the Tinker Bell movies). She's not terribly important in most of the movie, but she is important at the very end. Anyway... I wish I could think of something more to say about how I felt about the movie. I'm glad to have seen it, but it didn't really inspire me to any sort of analysis, or anything. And I don't expect to find it particularly memorable.