There’s an old joke, from back in the late seventies, about a Ford dealer, despondent over the recent shift of the auto market to Japanese compacts, who is walking along a beach somewhere in California, trying to get up the nerve to walk out into the waves and end it all. As the story goes, he finds an ancient bottle on the beach and idly rubs it. A djinn appears. “Master, you have released me from three thousand years of bondage,” says the djinn, “and in return I shall grant you your fondest wish. You need only express it.” “I wish to have a foreign-car franchise in a large city!” cries the Ford dealer, seeing a return of hope for his future. “Done!” answers the djinn, and in a puff of smoke the man finds himself in charge of the Ford franchise in the middle of Tokyo …

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it. So find Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser) in this remake of the 1967 classic with Peter Cook (who has the writing credits here) and Dudley Moore. Of course, the idea that deals with the Devil can go terribly wrong long precedes 1967.

Elliot is a four-year veteran of the customer service department at a San Francisco software firm called Sens-o-dyne. William Shatner once told Star Trek fans to “get a life”; Elliot doesn’t even have Star Trek. What he has are co-workers who despise him as a nothing, and a slight case of the hots for co-worker Alison (Frances O’Connor) to whom he actually spoke once, three years before, on a rainy June morning. And, he has caught the eye of The Devil, who is out looking for a soul in San Francisco because The Vatican is too hard a hunting ground and New York is too easy.

The Devil is, it turns out, a woman (Elizabeth Hurley), and she has, let the reviewer admit it, one Hell of a bod (and she shoots a mean game of pool!). She convinces Elliot to sign a contract three inches thick, in which she gets his soul in return for granting him seven wishes — though she does include in the seven the Big Mac and Coke (which he ended up paying for anyway); perhaps an homage to the Wimpy Bar in which Elliot’s prototype worked in 1967? Elliot first gets to be powerful and rich and married to Alison — woops! What did we forget to ask for here? — then kind and sensitive, then athletic and famous, then … well, suffice it to say that you always have to watch your language when asking the Devil for a favor (want to be President of the United States? You’d better to be sure to state the circumstances, or you may suddenly find yourself Abe Lincoln in a box at Ford Theater). And remember that even when you think you’ve specified everything, well, oh, my, goodness, you’ve probably left something out that will leap out and grab you at the last moment …

Well, things are never all that bad. We can hope that Elliot, far from losing his soul, will end up getting a life, and a lady, leaving the Devil free to continue to play Her unending chess game with God. There must be something in that contract that will allow him to escape …

Fraser’s petulant face, (1999’s The Mummy and 2001’s The Mummy Returns, not to mention George of the Jungle and Dudley Do-Right) seems to be appropriate for life-less Elliot, and Hurley makes a marvellous Satan(a).

All in all, a fun film.