Dazzle is a low-budget South African film that I saw courtesy of the Daily Mail’s “Magic & Fantasy” promotion, giving away a DVD with the newspaper every day for 2 weeks. Not every title out of the 14 interested me enough to part with even the lowly sum of 45p, but this one looked kind of interesting. We watched it last night and it is certainly an enjoyable little film, albeit very silly. (There were no extras on this DVD release.)

Made in 1999, Dazzle stars Maxwell Caudfield as Tom Nightingale, a successful author of children’s fairy stories. His daughter Melissa (Charlotte Savage) has been getting into trouble in school for talking about fairies in science class, though when her teacher “Miss Marinet” (Mia Sara) finds out just who Tom is and that he lost his wife just over a year ago, she becomes much more… friendly. As if this wasn’t enough to give the poor man who is still grieving the loss of his wife palpitations, one evening a naked woman turns up at the door and faints in his arms. This woman, Crystal (played by former Miss South Africa, Chantelle Stander) just happens to be a fairy who’s trapped in the real world – only she’s lost her memory…

To make things just a tad more interesting, Tom’s garden gnomes turn into Oddkin (Peter Bonner) and Bodkin (Big Mick), who are special agents from the fairy world, charged with bringing home rogue fairies. Then there’s the Collector (Jeff Fahey), who… well, he collects. It’s what he collects that may prove troublesome…

So we have a fantasy romp complete with annoying child and a love triangle. The script isn’t this film’s strongest point to be fair, but the overall storyline works relatively well. Maxwell Caulfield is okay but struggles to make much impression with his character (he mostly has to simply look bemused), while Chantelle Stander and Mia Sara give pretty good performances as the amnesiac fairy / single-minded teacher. Jeff Fahey has some evil fun in his role but the main thing that makes this so watchable is the ridiculous antics of Oddkin and Bodkin. They regularly save the film from becoming too slushy to bear, and their rendition of “Swan Lake” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen since the Gremlins were singing along to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. They also hold the ending together too – their little conversation about what to do and especially on the merits of eating cheeseburgers help the viewer to forget the completely illogical plot twist at the end.

The music score by Jane Marie Livermore is quite nice and, while a little too saccharine coated at times, fits the mood of the film nicely. The special effects are actually not that bad, they don’t look “expensive” as many films today do but they still look pretty good. The direction moved quite nicely along the action sequences, emotional moments, and comedy sections. Really it was the script that let it down with huge leaps of logic (or illogic?!) at times, leaving me with the feeling that the writers knew where they were starting and where they wanted to get to, but had no real idea how to actually move between the two points. This was most apparent in the ending, which defied everything previous stated in the movie, though was partially explained by Oddkin’s desire for a happy ending…

At the end of the day, Dazzle will never set the world on fire (or dazzle you… sorry, had to be said), but despite its sometimes dodgy storyline and inconsistent acting, it’s enjoyable hokum and a pleasant diversion from all the big-budget films.

Other Information

Director: David Lister
Year of release: 1999
Runtime: 88 minutes
Rating: U (Universal)


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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD