aimless-46 "A girl, sent by her parents to live with her two eccentric aunts and attend a new high school, finds out on her sixteenth birthday that she is a witch". This premise sets up Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) to be a blend of "Bewitched" and "Mean Girls".This teen movie belongs to the "high-school-queen-bee-gets-her-comeuppance" sub-genre of which there are endless examples. Apparently there is a huge viewing demographic who on some basic level repeatedly get off erotically or emotionally on this humiliation dynamic. The friendship and coming-of-age elements are almost incidental to the story.More central for your thinking viewer are the moral dilemma and ethical considerations raised by the story. Sabrina competes with other girls in track and field events; winning several of them by using her powers to cheat. Little effort is made to show her in any sort of quandary over her decision to cheat. The story hedges a bit on this issue, as her magic is mostly used in response to unwarranted attacks by her rival; but in several of the track & field events her cheating makes losers out of all the other participants and no attempt is made at rationalization or justification.The problem with casting someone like Melissa Joan Hart as your good girl love interest is the absence of even a hint of physical sizzle. Which means that to stay remotely credible with viewers, the bad girl she plays off has to be several erotic levels below Megan Fox; hence Tori Spelling lookalike Lalainia Lindbjerg as Katy Lemore (apparently a play on L'Amore). And Hart's rival Libby in the 1996-2003 series would be played by the even less sizzling Jenna Leigh Green. Which makes their inevitable comeuppances almost sterile. And since Katy does not rank especially high on the queen bee badness scale Sabrina's extreme revenge is way out of proportion. To appreciate the missed opportunity just check out Samantha's inspired abuse of rival Sheila Sommers (played by gorgeous Nancy Kovack) in several episodes of "Bewitched".But the producers should get some credit for a glammed up Katy in the "Zapped" (1982) inspired final comeuppance scene. Although Sabina has tortured Katy throughout the movie she saves the most extreme for the end, reducing her rival to a disheveled and whimpering wreck. With this "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" sets a new standard in teen movie queen bee degradation, if that is your idea of a turn on or a good time. Going any further with this sort of thing would cross into "Carrie" territory and that is an entirely different genre.Sabina's bad boy hunk Seth is played by sleepy looking Ryan Reynolds, he is relatively harmless and almost cluelessly disengaged. Reynolds would play an almost identical character three years later in "Dick". "Dead Like Me's" Daisy - Laura Harris - plays one of Katy's friends and has a lot of what the main actresses are missing.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

cchristensen_88 I do like this movie, but I don't think that they did a very good job at making the movie to a TV series and what I mean is that Harvey isn't the same person he is a nerd in this movie has like no friends and not that cute. In the TV series Harvey is basically the opposite. Sabrina's last name isn't even Spellman in this movie. The aunts aren't as comical in this movie and are obviously not the same actresses Hilda is smart and Zelda is more ditsy in this movie and the actresses chosen to play Hilda and Zelda look like they should of been switched around....this Hilda looks more like the TV Zelda and this Zelda looks more like the TV Hilda. Sabrina cant just think about something she wants and point she has to make up an incantation for every little thing she wants, I'm thinking an incantation for ice cream is going to sound like a bad rap song. Salem is not as amusing and was turned into a witch familiar for using magic to win a girls heart and kissing her when she wasn't his true love or something it sounds more like when Sabrina first kisses Harvey in the TV show and turns him into a frog and the only way for him to be human again is true love. I think Salem is a bore compared to the evil,self-centered,world dominating Salem everyone knows and loves on TV. Also in this movie Sabrina's parents are both witches and have to go on a sabbatical cause she has to go to someone to train her to use her magic on TV her mom is mortal and dad is a witch and the woman who plays his girlfriend Gayle is the same as this movie's aunt Zelda, but the reason she's with her aunts on TV is cause she can't see her mother or her mom turns into wax and her dad is busy working in the magic book so he's like stuck in the book yeah its different but its still a lot more interesting than what is happening with her dad in this movie. I love Sabrina the teenage witch I just think its obvious that some people weren't thinking at all when they made this movie then switched it to a TV series.

sundrop I am a huge fan of the TV show, but this movie was not exactly like it. I thought that the movie would be like the beginning of the TV series, and have the same cast and set as before. It didn't.There is no humor in this one, and the aunts seem almost spooky. They're funny in the real show, but in this movie how they shut their eyes and mumble is almost creepy. They seem pretty cool in the show, but in this, they seem hopelessly old-fashioned and eccentric. I also think that this should have had something more to do with the Other Realm and being a witch than popularity and crushes. Also, Salem's voice in this is British, and he doesn't even make one funny remark.Even though this was far from the quality of the TV series, I am very glad that it aired. If it weren't for this, the show might not have existed! Overall, I'm glad that this movie exists, but I wish it had been like the TV show.

Cyprus386 I do think the the TV series based on this TV flick is better, but this movie did set the course for laugh-out-loud comedy series. Most of the casting is messed up, except for Michelle Beaudoin as Marny, Sabrina's best friend. Michelle went on to play Sabrina's best friend Jenny for a season, which was good. However, the voice of Salem in this one was all wrong! The voice in the show is much better.