Hocus Pocus (1993) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another movie review. This time I'm taking a look at the 1993 Halloween cult classic film, Hocus Pocus. I doubt there'll be spoilers in this review, though I might do some minor ones, depending on how things go as I write it. We'll see though. If there are spoilers, this is your spoiler warning. Let's get into it.

Hocus Pocus isn't a movie that I grew up with, despite growing up in the '90s. I don't remember seeing any commercials for it on TV, I don't remember seeing any previews for it on any other Disney home video releases, though apparently there's one on the VHS for Super Mario Bros. (1993), and I never saw it at the video store or for sale at K-Mart or Zellers. It most likely aired on Family Channel at some point in the 2000s, but, I never saw it, and I never saw it on TV anywhere else either. I've actually heard more about it in the last tfour or five years than I ever did growing up. But, with it being on Disney+, I decided to give it a shot because, despite it bombing at the box office when it originally came out 30 years ago, it's gained a cult following through DVD releases and airings on various Disney owned TV channels. Which is interesting, because, normally a movie gains that following through the original home video release, in this case VHS, but, it wasn't until the DVD release, which came out in 2002, that people started to watch it.

The movie came out on July 16th, 1993, which was the same day that Free Willy came out. Though, according to Wikipedia, Hocus Pocus was ahead of Free Willy at the box office opening weekend, but obviously quickly fell behind. The thing is 1993 didn't have a ton of major box office successes. The biggest one was Jurassic Park. So it's not like Disney had any major competition that year. Maybe it's because it came out in July, and most kids maybe aren't as interested in seeing a Halloween movie in July. I don't know. 

The cast is spectacular. You have Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Omri Katz, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Doug Jones, Sean Murray, Jason Marsden, and Kathleen Freeman. I'm not super familiar with Bette Midler's work though she did voice Georgette the poodle in Disney's 1988 animated classic, Oliver & Company, which I have seen, and she voiced Grandmama in The Addams Family in 2019 so I have seen her in a couple of things, but nothing major. I mostly know her from her 1989 version of the 1982 song, "Wind Beneath My Wings", which I used to hear on the radio quite a bit when I was growing up. Particularly in the 2000s. I'm also not super familiar with Sarah Jessica Parker's work. I've seen her in season 4 of Glee, but I mostly know her from commercials for Sex and the City. The rest of the adult cast is great, with particular shoutouts to Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson, who is the man of a thousand faces though I know him as Saru on Star Trek: Discovery, and the late Kathleen Freeman as Max and Allison's teacher, who I know as The Penguin in The Blues Brothers (1980) and as Gloria, one of the ladies that Jake (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) gets a ride from (all Tom Jones fans) in I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998). She's the one who rips the Santa Claus beard off of him and says, "Did I hurt you Santa? Good". 

The younger cast was amazing. Omri Katz as Max, Vinessa Shaw as Allison, and Thora Birch as Dani did such an amazing job. I've seen Omri in Matinee, which also came out in 1993. He played Gene's friend, Stan. I admit I only know who Thora Birch is from an article that the November 1995 issue of Disney Adventures magazine did about the movie she was in at the time, Now and Then. Vinessa Shaw is the only one of the three main kid stars that I'm not familiar with at all. She's done a ton of movies, but I've never seen any of them. One more note to make on the cast is that Sean Murray, who everyone knows as Agent McGee on NCIS, plays the original human form of Thackery Binx, and Jason Marsden, who voices Max in A Goofy Movie, and is a major voice actor for animated TV shows, voices Binx as a cat. Marsden apparently appeared as a Ferengi in a season 4 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is hilarious. I'll have to keep an eye out for his character when I get around to doing a watchthrough of DS9.

Honestly, I really like this movie. I don't like it as much as I might've had I watched it growing up in the '90s and early 2000s, but, it's a solid movie. The jokes are funny, the action is pretty intense, and it has an incredible cast, as I've been raving about for the vast majority of this review. It's not a horror movie, but it is a Halloween movie. There isn't anything in the movie that didn't make sense to me and I liked all of the characters, except for Jay and Ice, the bullies of the movie, who steal Max's shoes for some reason. Yeah, that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Of the three Sanderson Sisters, Sarah, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is my favourite. Probably because she acts the least evil of the three. Not to mention the least scary of them.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect when I turned on Disney+ to watch Hocus Pocus for the first time last night. Like I said earlier in this review, I'd heard of the movie, but not a super ton and not until sometime in the last four or five years. I was completely unaware of its existence when I was a kid. Nobody I knew watched it, or if they did, they never talked to me about it. So despite hearing about it as an adult, I had no real preconceived notions going into it. I also didn't watch or read any reviews online before watching it, so I wasn't influenced by anyone else's opinions of it.

Overall this is a great movie. The sequel, which came out last year, is on Disney+ so I'll be watching that tomorrow night probably. But, for now that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my revisit review of the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Strange New Worlds", which is the last Star Trek pilot/premiere episode review that I'm doing since I don't have Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy to watch their premiere episodes. So, until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.