The Witches

Despite some high-profile collaborators, the reimagined cinematic adaptation of The Witches fails to cast its intended spell.

Taking plenty of liberties from Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, this coming-of-age adventure from Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) is neither consistently charming nor frightening.

It’s set in 1960s Alabama, where a young orphan (Jahzir Bruno) is still mourning the deaths of his parents in a car accident. He’s sent to live with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer), who brightens his spirit with a pet mouse but has a troubling history of encounters with witchcraft.

They flee their small town for a coastal resort, unwittingly sharing a hotel with a sinister coven of undercover witches — led by the shapeshifting Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) — trying to perfect a potion that would turn all children into feeble mice.

After falling into their trap, and becoming a rodent himself, our precocious hero must team up with a couple of other pint-sized guests to gain revenge on the evil sorceresses.

The Witches is technically dazzling, with Zemeckis again seamlessly incorporating special effects into a visually resplendent fantasy world.

Bruno’s expressive performance as the impressionable youngster provides a window into this world for the target demographic — younger kids who can identify with the preteen protagonist’s curiosity and resourcefulness. Hathaway gleefully inhabits the over-the-top villainess with a devilish zeal the film otherwise lacks.

So where’s the magic you’d expect from the powerhouse screenwriting trio of Zemeckis, Kenya Barris (TV’s “Black-ish”) and Guillermo del Toro? At least their script dials back the hyperactivity and low-brow slapstick that plagues many children’s films these days, but the momentum tends to lag instead. Chris Rock feels subdued as the narrator, forced to tell us how scary things are supposed to be because too often we can’t see or feel it ourselves.

The half-hearted effort to update the source material with a nod toward cultural diversity becomes lost in all the effects-driven mayhem of the second half. Likewise the attempt to squeeze in a message of self-acceptance, even if life gives you fur and whiskers and shrinks you down to a few inches tall.

Dahl’s book spawned a superior 1990 British film directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Anjelica Huston. By trying to break free from its pages, this remake struggles to retain its bewitching spirit.

Rated PG, 104 minutes.