Do you remember the Scary Godmother? Think hard. You have seen it before. It was on a Saturday evening in October, during the early 2000s. Cartoon Network was busy counting down to Halloween night and as a special treat showed the animated comedy, “Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktacular.” And just like that, thousands of kids were forever left with the question: “to what end did this film exist?” If you really do not remember this movie, here is a basic, spoiler-free breakdown.
A little girl named Hannah is tricked by her older cousin and his friends into exploring a haunted house. There, she meets the Scary Godmother, a quirky, friendly and weirdly tall witch that looks like a cross between Miss Frizzle and the Halloween section at Dollar Tree. She whisks Hannah away to the Fright Side, where monsters are real and Hannah meets a host of new friends— an uncomfortable gay stereotype in the form of a skeleton, a huge mood-swinging furball, an irritating mooch of a werewolf, two constantly flirtatious vampires and their Hot-Topic reject son. While Hannah’s tormentors celebrate their attempt to traumatize her, she is busy getting up to all sorts of wacky adventures. This film inhabits a strange realm shared by a few other notable products, a realm for things that seem to have not actually happened and which can only be remembered through recuperative hypnosis.
Other denizens of this realm include the Annoying Orange TV show, those Danimals commercials with Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Mr. Meaty, Tech Deck Dudes and Roly Poly Ollie. They are things that leave us unaware of how lasting their impressions are. So why is ‘Scary Godmother’ noteworthy in this regard? Well, for one thing, it is very niche. Audiences really will not find its equal, for better or for worse. If you want the Scary Godmother experience, you have to watch the original. The stylistic choices in this film are so bizarre and inscrutable that it becomes almost a game, trying to parse out what the actual intentions of the creators were. Why do the characters all move like possessed puppets? Why does the CGI look just so uncanny? Why does literally nothing happen in this movie? Seriously, try and name off the top of your head one major conflict in the film. It is really just a series of kooky antics tied together with this surreal narrative string.
The movie is based off of a children’s book and it shows through, but the medium transition adds this layer of nightmare to it that makes it into this rollercoaster ride of computer-generated, candy-coated horror. It ends up being the epitome of a made-for-television movie: haphazard, indecipherable and kind of iconic. With the rise of streaming, we may never get products like this again, no more yearly screening times or shoddy promotional tie-ins. If you are looking to feel like a confused seven-year-old again, give this one a rewatch. You might get scared, but definitely not for the reasons anyone would expect.
Image from Channel Awesome via YouTube
