One should always be wary of the devil.  Such advice works no matter your religious alignment.  Most religions have a concept of evil.  Since satan is the embodiment of all that is bad, it stands to reason that everyone needs to be aware of his (or her) trickery.  Then again, I do not want to get into the pan-spiritualism in which today’s film, Bedazzled (2000), slips. My Faith, Catholicism, has a great deal of respect for other traditions, but with her is the fullness of truth.  If I may be so bold, I often get the sense that most subconsciously accept this fact, though my only evidence is the fact that when films want to signal Christianity, they turn to the Church.  You see this in this movie and many others.  My job is to tell you what else it contains.

Fun fact: at the time of Bedazzled’s release, the Earth contained 6.2 billion souls.  The one on which we focus is the awkward and lonely tech company employ Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser).  His awkwardness with everyone, especially his co-workers, is why he is lonely.  It is evident, though, that he means well.  While everyone else clearly tries to avoid him, he does not take offense at their barely disguised rudeness.  For example, early on we see him appear at a local San Francisco watering hole.  All his co-workers had told him they would be elsewhere when he asked if they had plans, but had all shown up at this location.  In other words, poor planning on their part.  Elliot ignores their attempts to hide themselves and sits with them.  However, his attention is soon distracted when Alison Gardner (Frances O’Connor) enters the establishment.  For the past few years, Elliot has had a crush on her, but never the nerve to ask her on a date.  With some encouragement from the others, Elliot walks over to talk to her for the second time in four years.  She is sweet but says she does not recognize him.  He turns to look back at his snickering co-workers, but when he turns around just as quickly, Alison is gone.  In his dejection, he speaks under his breath and into the ether that he would do anything to be with her.  Anything appears in the next second in the form of the devil (Elizabeth Hurley), but he does not immediately recognize her as the prince (or princess) of darkness.  Instead, the devil backs into why she has come, taking her time in convincing him as to her true identity.  It takes her doing a few tricks that can only be performed with an otherworldly power for him to believe.  Once this is accomplished, she takes him to her nightclub where everyone in attendance is glamorous and showering him with adulation.  They breeze through it and go into her office where she finally comes to her desire for him to sell his soul to her.  The price is seven wishes, and they can be whatever it is he wants.  When he still hesitates, she wonders aloud what a soul is worth, and whether he is using it.  Now, there is a theological question for you, but the answer is priceless and yes.  To seal the deal, she shows him a fantasy scenario with him and Alison on the beach, his image telling him to sign the contract and Alison beckoning for him.  With that, he writes his name on the dotted line, and the devil eagerly awaits his first wish.  Bear in mind, for this will be counted against him later, he is already down a wish because he had earlier asked for a Big Mac and Coke.  Thus, his second wish is for him to be rich and powerful, and married to Alison, of course.  Thus, the devil turns him into a Colombian drug lord.  The trick, and there is always a trick, is that Alison is not in love with him.  Instead, she has fallen for her English teacher, Raoul (Rudolf Martin), who leads a coup against Elliot.  As Elliot is falling from a helicopter to his probable death, he pulls out a pager-like device, dials three sixes, and is taken back to his original reality.  This sort of thing happens five more times, each instance involving Elliot seemingly learning his lesson from the devil’s games and trying to get around them with his subsequent wishes.  In all of them, the devil finds some flaw in the logic that either prevents him from being with Alison, or leads to him almost dying.  The latter occurs when the devil makes him become Abraham Lincoln when he asks to be somebody important who can change the world.  It is this last one that convinces Elliot that he is never going to get what he wants by dealing with the devil.  Thus, he tries to call off the contract, but ends up looking crazy as he argues with his computer screen at work.  Next, he enters a Catholic Church where he is asked by a priest (Brian Doyle-Murray) whether he is okay.  Elliot responds by discussing his interactions with the devil, and saying that he needs to talk to God.  Naturally, the priest suggests prayer, but Elliot adamantly says he needs to speak with God directly and immediately.  His attitude lands him behind bars where a man (Gabriel Casseus) asks how Elliot landed in jail.  Again, Elliot talks about selling his soul, and the man says one of the most theologically true statements in cinematic history: our souls do not belong to us, they belong to God.  As such, when Elliot is released, he goes to the devil’s club where he claims to not want his last wish.  The devil does not take this development kindly, and quickly he is before the horned one in the hot place about to be pitchforked.  Without thinking, he wishes for Alison to have a good life.  Disgusted, Elliot is spared and awakens in front of the courthouse where she is meeting with some “clients.”  His selfless act had saved him from damnation.  Though he has newfound courage, he finds out that Alison is seeing someone.  Having the peace of mind of finally “shooting his shot,” he goes home to meet Nicole Delarusso (Frances O’Connor).  She is his new neighbor, looks exactly like Alison, and him and Nicole have a lot in common.  Thus, we end with them together.

There is a hint at the end of Bedazzled that Nicole’s appearance has been set up through Divine intervention.  At least, I prefer to think of it as Divine.  The devil is portrayed in too sympathetic a manner for my tastes, and my judgement of is backed by the film’s events.  Granted, the devil and Elliot are friendly, but she torments him throughout the entire plot.  That is her job as the great deceiver, so that portion of the story is theologically correct.  It should also be noted that the enemy will not always come at you through easy to identify tricks.  Sometimes, it is through something good that we can be led astray.  That is largely what happens with Elliot.  His desire to be with Alison is a pure one.  For example, there is a scene when the devil and he are in her bedroom.  He is nervous at first, referring to their intrusion as breaking and entering.  She assuages his fears by saying that they are invisible, then telling him to peak into the shower at her.  Though he eventually gives into this temptation, his initial response is no, and his glance is miniscule.  It is not a completely noble way of behaving, and had this been something other than a comedy, I am confident he would have passed the test.  I say this because of what he does with his last wish.  Throughout, he does what anyone would have done if given the apparently unlimited power of getting whatever it is for which they wish.  It changes by seeing not just how the devil manipulates those desires, which happens in real life, but in realizing how much he had been thinking only of himself.  Indeed, his first response with his last request is to say that there is nothing he wants.  Of course, such a sentiment is unrealistic because everybody has wants.  The key is his clarification, saying that there is nothing he desires that she can give him.  That, along with the man with whom he shared his cell, who is supposed to be God, telling Elliot that his soul belongs to Him, make this movie one of the better ones in terms of giving you some solid theology.

Speaking of theology, my favorite moment in Bedazzled is when Elliot has a public exclamation of joy when he realizes his soul no longer belongs to the devil.  Put differently, he felt his soul’s worth.  I wish we could all have that experience.  Until then, with some notable aspects of it to be wary of, you can always watch this film.