Bedazzled (2000)
Directed by Harold Ramis
No — Bedazzled is not woke, scoring 9 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Harold Ramis took the 1967 Faustian comedy by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and sanded it down for a new century, which in this case means 2000, a year in which the culture wars had not yet acquired their present vocabulary.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly white, with Orlando Jones and Gabriel Casseus in supporting turns that are never framed as representative or commented upon. Diversity exists as background texture, not as a statement.
The film closes with a mild moral about selflessness voiding the contract and Heaven and Hell existing on Earth by human choice, but it is delivered gently rather than as a sermon.
The Devil is reimagined as a seductive woman, a change from the 1967 original, but she functions as a vampish temptress archetype rather than a vehicle for any feminist argument. No gender politics are articulated.
There is faint satire of dead-end corporate IT drudgery and consumer culture (the McDonald's gag, the contract's fine print, Ebert's noted 'consumer complaints'), but it is incidental comedy rather than an eat-the-rich thesis.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext of any kind. The entire premise is a straight man pursuing a straight woman.
Race is entirely absent as a subject. No commentary, no themes, no engagement whatsoever.
No environmental themes or content of any kind.
No body-positivity themes. Physical appearance is largely played for conventional romantic-comedy gags.
Elliot is characterized as socially awkward and geeky, but this is played as comic loserdom, not as neurodivergent identity or advocacy.
No historical subject matter to revise. The Faust legend is fantasy, not history.
Why it received this score
Harold Ramis took the 1967 Faustian comedy by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and sanded it down for a new century, which in this case means 2000, a year in which the culture wars had not yet acquired their present vocabulary. Brendan Fraser plays Elliot Richards, a socially awkward IT worker who signs away his soul to a seductive female Devil, played by Elizabeth Hurley, for seven wishes and a shot at the colleague he worships from a distance. The gender swap is the film's single structural revision, and it is deployed as a vampish temptress gag, all leather and arched eyebrows, with no argument attached. Progress arrives here as costume design.
The comedy nibbles at office life and consumer culture without ever biting. Elliot's dead-end job and the co-workers who flee his company are played for easy laughs. A wish for a Big Mac results in a trip to McDonald's where he must pay, because the Devil left her purse downstairs. Roger Ebert observed that the whole affair plays like contract negotiations and consumer complaints, which is accurate and also the funniest thing about it. The closing moral, that a selfless wish voids the contract and that Heaven and Hell are really just choices people make on Earth, lands softly. It is a shrug dressed as wisdom.
The cast is white to a degree that would raise eyebrows today, with Orlando Jones and Gabriel Casseus drifting through supporting roles that carry no weight or comment. There is no queer content, no climate anxiety, no racial reckoning, no body politics, no neurodivergent advocacy. The film predates the era when such things became obligations, and it shows no interest in anticipating them. What remains is a mild, watchable remake that wants only to be charming. It mostly is, and nothing more.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Elliot Richards, a socially awkward IT worker, is given seven wishes to get the girl of his dreams when he meets a very seductive Satan. The catch: his soul. Some of his wishes include being a 7 foot basketball star, a wealthy, powerful man, and a sensitive caring guy. But, as could be expected, the Devil puts her own little twist on each of his fantasies.
Questions about Bedazzled
Is Bedazzled woke?
No — Bedazzled is not woke, scoring 9 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Bedazzled have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 18.
How does Bedazzled compare to other 2000 movies?
It ranks #57 of the 125 films from 2000 we've scored; their average is 13. The wokest is But I'm a Cheerleader (72).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.