Hocus Pocus (film)/YMMV

• Main
• Trivia
• YMMV
• Fridge
• Headscratchers
• WMG
• Crowners
  • Awesome
  • Funny
  • Heartwarming
  • Nightmare Fuel
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

• Cliché Storm: Seriously....is there a single late-Eighties or early-Nineties comedy trope they missed? Let's see here....We've got a Cool Loser hero with a pretty heavy snarker persona; his clueless yuppie parents; his bratty younger sibling; a cute talking animal; villains who spend at least as much time making dreadful wisecracks as doing anything truly evil; satirical jabs galore...
  • Well, no one imitates Michael Jackson and does the moonwalk, as far as I can recall, so that's one.
• Ear Worm: "I Put A Spell On You".
• Ending Fatigue: Ah, good - the witches have been roasted alive!...But wait - they somehow managed to survive! Thank heavens, they can't do any more harm without Winnie's book...But wait - those two geniuses, Allison and Max, got the bright idea to open it after Binx told them not to! Whew, Max just psyched the witches out with the old "headlights" ploy...Oh, darn - they just realized they're still alive!, etc.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Binx, full stop. Heaven knows he's far more interesting than anyone else in the cast barring the witches, themselves. He's also most sympathetic character, given his nightmare fuelish backstory.
  • Billy is a more notable example, in that he is a much smaller role who tends to be well-remembered and a favorite of fans of the film.
• Evil Is Sexy: Sarah. She is played by Sarah Jessica Parker at the apex of her beauty, wearing a top just low enough to show the shape and curve of her breasts, and her powers include hypnosis through singing. You almost want to be sucked by her, except that if you're any older than a child you're too old.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Winifred is choleric, Sarah is sanguine, and Mary is melancholic/phlegmatic
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: When Sarah Jessica Parker did Who Do You Think You Are she was very disturbed to discover that one of her ancestors was accused of being a witch in Salem, MA. Before learning about her ancestor, she says she would rather have her being accused then doing the accusing. Luckily the witch craze effectively ended one month before her trial.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Max rescues Dani from certain death by the Sanderson Sisters, he says, "I know one kind of power that you don't have!" (or something like that), and Winnie asks, "And what is that, dude?" before he replies with, "It's Daylight Savings Time," followed by the turned-on car lights pretending to be the sun that harms them. Of course, considering that it was a joke back in 1993 (when DST ended on the last Sunday of October in the U.S.), the new U.S. Daylight Saving Time rules weren't around until 14 years later, when DST now ends on the first Sunday of November from 2007 onward. Of course, the joke now still works only if Halloween happens to fall on the day before the first Sunday of November (i.e., Saturday, October 31).
  • Binx, the ghost cat.
• Love to Hate: The Sanderson Sisters are kind of why we watch this movie. As scary as they are.
• Memetic Mutation: Long after this movie left theaters, you couldn't use the word "amok" without somebody chiming in with Sarah Sanderson's sing-songy "A-MUCK, a-MUCK, a-MUCK, a-MUCK!"
• Moral Event Horizon: As funny as the Sanderson Sisters are, there’s basically no going back once you sell your soul. Especially when you start draining the life from children.
• Nausea Fuel: "A bit of thine own tongue."
• Nightmare Fuel: The book, zombies, immortal black cats really a boy denied entrance to heaven and soul sucking witches.
• Older Than They Think: In the 1964 short Looney Tunes short "Bewitched Bunny", Hanzel and Gretel turn to Witch Hazel and say, "Ack, your mother rides a vacuum cleaner" before fleeing.
• Squick: Tastefully averted. Emily Binx gets all the youth and vitality drained from her at the beginning of the film - but she slumps over in death, leaving only her gray hair visible. One can only imagine what her face looks like.
• Tear Jerker: Admit it - you cried when Binx died, too.
• Toy Ship: Thackery/Dani, if you can believe it.
• What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Considering how constantly it points out Max's lack of a sex life...
• What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Given the high density of A Man Is Not a Virgin jokes directed at someone not even 16 yet, you just have to wonder if the entire staff didn't have access to some kind of illegal substance when they decided that was perfect material for a children's film.
  • Hell, the illegal substances may be how they paid off the Media Watchdogs and Moral Guardians to get this released as it is.
• The Woobie: Say what you will about the film, overall, but you just can't help but feel very sorry for poor Binx. The poor kid fights for all his worth to save his little sister, just to fail and then endure a Painful Transformation into a cat. Then he gets rejected by his father who he was trying to communicate with in his hour of grieving. Finally, and this is the juicy bit, he spends the next few hundreds years, alone, with only his self-appointed duty in keeping the witches from coming back to give him purpose, but otherwise wandering aimlessly through his own personal, eternal hell. The only thing that averts this from being a full on And I Must Scream is that he somehow relearns how to talk as a cat.