Madcap Fairies Weave A Spell On Manhattan In `A Simple Wish'

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XX "A Simple Wish," starring Martin Short, Mara Wilson, Kathleen Turner, Robert Pastorelli. Directed by Michael Ritchie from a screenplay by Jeff Rothberg. Alderwood, Auburn Cinema 17, Everett 9, Factoria, Gateway, Issaquah 9, Meridian 16, Metro, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza, Renton Village, South Hill Mall. 90 minutes. "PG" - Parental Guidance suggested for a scene involving a shotgun.

At least the premise of Michael Ritchie's "A Simple Wish" is a droll one: An aspiring fairy godmother named Murray, who barely scrapes through his final exams, gets a chunk of Manhattan for his first assignment.

Murray (Martin Short) means well, but when it comes to spell-casting he has to wing even the sneezed-out "sha-sha-BOOM!" His magic wand is an old car antenna. And yet, because he's a New York fairy godmother, he throws out one-liners like a Catskill comedian.

Murray is the sort of figment of a child's imagination that the movies love: a grown-up kid with frizzy red hair, a whiff of the otherworldly, and a trick of fouling up the things he's supposed to be righting.

When we first meet him, Murray is taking the godmother exam, running through a cute paroxysm of crossed eyes and doubletakes as he panics, cheats and slowly melts down.

Cut to the bedroom of a little girl named Annabel (Mara Wilson from "Mathilda"), who invokes her fairy godmother because her dad, Oliver (Robert Pastorelli), is up for the lead in an Andrew Lloyd Webber-like Broadway musical.

Annabel seems delighted by the maelstrom of fairy showbiz that Murray brings to his work. But with his rabbity incisors and busy performance, you feel little doubt that Short has no shot at making her "simple wish," for Dad to get the part, come true.

Writer Jeff Rothberg, who wrote last year's like-minded "Bogus," includes a subplot about a big-boned villain named Claudia (Kathleen Turner).

Six months previously Claudia "went over to the dark side" because she was tired of fulfilling little girls' desires. Now, while Murray "a-choo's" out a spell for Annabel, Claudia busts into the annual meeting of the North American Fairy Godmother Association and zaps its head (Ruby Dee) into two-dimensional cardboard while she hunts for her wand.

Guess who has it, and guess who just missed the convention?

There are some neat tricks in the fairy world. Frogs leap from Oliver's rival's throat at one point, and at another Murray makes a coach and horse whirl into pumpkin and mouse. Yet that world is consistently less interesting than the stage world Annabel's father aspires to.

As it turns out, the magic Murray finally works is a quicksilver fillip that any mortal could have managed, and we probably could have been spared the we-aren't-in-Manhattan-anymore tour of Nebraska and the silly woofing of Claudia's pet-companion Boots (Amanda Plummer).

I kept hoping the filmmakers would realize the more interesting transformations were happening in the stage world, not in their special effects.

And couldn't they have squeezed in just one more song?