A guy who goes around exclaiming things like “Ho doggy!” and remembers verbatim a pedestrian conversation he had with his dream girl years after the fact could obviously use a little help in life. And it doesn’t hurt to get it from Elizabeth Hurley. In Harold Ramis’ Bedazzled—an Americanized and, in many respects, inferior remake of Stanley Donen’s 1967 Dudley Moore and Peter Cook comedy—Elliot (Brendan Fraser) is struggling. He’s the worst kind of doormat: a loser who doesn’t quite know he’s a loser. So he keeps cracking cringe-inducing jokes, inviting himself to after-work get-togethers, and pining ever-so-obviously after Allison (Frances O’Connor), a pretty co-worker who hurtfully doesn’t remember him—despite their intense exchange about the weather a few years back. Enter a savior, although things don’t unfold in the typical your-misery-now-will-earn-you-heaven-later way: With Hurley’s Princess of Darkness dangling eternal happiness in front of the soon-to-be damned, hell has never looked so good. She offers Elliot seven wishes in exchange for his soul, and although he initially rebuffs her with lines like “You seem really nice in a strong, scary kind of way,” he can’t resist temptation. When each of Elliot’s wishes turns out to be significantly less fulfilling than he expected, he finally finds true happiness (or, rather, a renewed appreciation of his old life) by using his last wish for an unselfish purpose. (Ah, Hollywood.) Hurley’s Devil lacks the gleeful, childlike mean streak of Cook’s original, although I suspect contemporary audiences won’t try to see much beyond her red leather outfits and great hair. Fraser uses his natural oafishness to great comedic effect as he morphs into the not-quite-right incarnations of Elliot’s dream lifestyles. From cliché-spouting NBA star to ultrasensitive nature-lover who writes songs about dolphins (“You’re more than a fish to me”), Fraser’s characterizations are the only substantial moments in this wisp of a film. —Tricia Olszewski