User Reviews

I myself grew up watching the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episodes. If you are a big fan of Melissa Joan Hart or love the series then you will definitely love this movie. The movie takes place at the beginning when Sabrina just discovers that she is a witch. It is very interesting to see how she copes with it and what she goes through. However not all of the main characters in the show make it to the movie since the movie was created first. The voice of Salem you can also tell is off. But, it is a great started movie to the series. I loved watching it.

If you like Sabrina, then watch this movie. It will amaze you. It is magical.

Sixteen year old Sabrina Sawyer (Melissa Joan Hart) moves in with her aunts Hilda (Sherry Miller) and Zelda (Charlene Fernetz) in Riverdale. After three months, her inner witch abilities are starting to show. Marnie Littlefield (Michelle Beaudoin) is her best friend at school. They have a crush on hot jock Seth (Ryan Reynolds). Harvey has a secret crash on Sabrina. Katy Lemore spices up her love life by breaking up with Seth. On her birthday, Sabrina is given her spell book and then their cat Salem starts talking. She tries to win Seth with witchcraft but it requires love with a pure heart from Seth or else she'll be turned into a witch's familiar.

It's fine as a teen romance. Harvey could be played by an actor with a bit more charm. The rest of the cast is fine. This is for the TV show's fans and also anybody who wants to see Ryan Reynolds in his 80s fluffy golden blonde hair. It's a low level family-friendly fun time and not anything more.

I'm afraid to say that the TV-series has a much higher production value. This is basically a cheap TV movie with a very thin plot. Sabrina fights with the high school's ice queen over a boy and Sabrina uses some magic to win his heart. Maybe that's enough for an episode in the series, but not for an entire movie.

I don't know why everyone's being so hard on this movie. No it's not like the TV series, but come on, this was made BEFORE the TV series as a movie all on its own, of course it's different. Instead of endlessly comparing it to the TV show and complaining, why not try letting it stand on it's own?

I actually really like this movie, so much so that I recently bought it on DVD. I thought it was really cute. It doesn't try to be anything it's not. It's simple, but for me that worked. For me the cast meshed very well together. Back when this movie was made Melissa Joan Hart was young enough to be able to pull off playing a TEENAGE witch and she did a really good job. Melissa Joan Hart was so sweet in this film, she was cute but not too much, and her acting was just fine. I really enjoyed Michelle Beaudoin as Marnie, Sabrina's best friend. Beaudoin had great chemsitry with Hart and it was very easy to believe their friendship, which felt very natural. I also thought Lalainia Lindbjerg was super as the malicious Queen Bee character Katie and Ryan Reynolds was great as hunky Seth, while Tobias Mehler was perfect as Harvey. My only complaint is that I found Sherry Miller and Charlene Fernetz really bland and uninteresting as the aunts. They weren't so bad but I'm not that keen on them either.

The storyline was good enough...Sabrina Saywer is relatively new in River Dale. She has a crush on Seth, a senior and the hottest guy in school. But Seth is invovled with Queen Bee Katie, however when Katie breaks up with him Seth begins noticing Sabrina. When Sabrina uses her newly discovered magical powers to win a track competition, Seth asks her to the Spring Fling dance at school but by this time Sabrina's unsure if Seth really is the guy for her. All the while poor Harvey, who's liked Sabrina all along, has to wait to see if Sabrina will have a change of heart.

Sabrina, The Teenage Witch plays very much like a chick flick aimed at young teens. It clearly was made on a low budget but it still (in my opinion) looked good and it's just a cute movie that's fun if you have some time on your hands. Try and watch it with an open mind, forget about the TV show while you do, and don#t judge this little bit of fluff too harshly. You might just enjoy it.

Released to TV in spring 1996, "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" was the pilot movie for the series that ran for seven years from 1996-2003. The plot revolves around Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) having to move from Massachusetts to live with her two eccentric aunts in Rockland County, New York, where she starts attending Riverdale High, becomes besties with Marnie (Michelle Beaudoin) and contends with requisite mean girl, Katy Lemore (Lalainia Lindbjerg). After her 16th birthday, Sabrina learns she's a witch and grapples with the morality of having powers other mortals don't.

The tone of the production is decidedly pedestrian in a mid-90's TV manner, but the cast brightens things up with their energy and a decent script. (It was amusing to learn why Salem can talk and other cats can't). I've probably watched a dozen episodes of the subsequent series and the main draw was always Melissa's winsomeness. She was 19 years-old when this pilot was shot and just got more beautiful over the course of the series. For those interested, Ryan Reynolds has a significant role; he was 18-19 during filming.

The movie runs 1 hour, 31 minutes and was shot in British Columbia with some establishing shots done in Brookline, Massachusetts (or so IMDb says).

GRADE: B-

If you are like me and enjoyed the television show as a kid and had no idea this movie existed, well then you probably never gave a second thought to spending an hour and a half of your life watching this. With its straight to video production value, this nostalgic time warp will make you remember every thing we wanted to forget about the 90s. Yes, I'm talking about Ryan Reynolds hair. What the heck! I can forgive and sorta forget the loose plot and the ridiculous score but that hair style is a sin.

I think the previous comments can be explained by some clarification. Sabrina, the Teenage Witch the movie came first. Given the popularity of the movie, a TV show spawned off of it (much the same as what happened with Buffy, the movie was first) and the cast changes and other changes were made. I liked the series, but it's important to note that since Sabrina was already popular by that point because of the movie, the series had the opportunity to be much more polished and complete. Taken with that in mind, it's much easier to enjoy the movie as the delightful first romp through the Sabrina world that it is, rather than comparing to the much-improved later works.

I watched the 1990s TV series when I was younger, and I enjoyed that quite a lot back in the day, especially with the hilarious Salem and the awful fake puppet that they turned him into. And as I sat down to watch the 1996 movie "Sabrina The Teenage Witch", which apparently spawned the TV series, here in 2023, I vaguely remember having seen the movie once before.

The storyline in this 1996 movie was adequate. I mean, it was by no means as interesting or funny as the TV series was, but it made for an adequate enough viewing. It was what it was, for better or worse. I was moderately entertained by what writers Barney Cohen, Kathryn Wallack and Nicholas Factor had conjured up here for the script and storyline.

The acting performances in "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" were good, and it definitely was nice to have Melissa Joan Hart in the leading role, since she was the only one of the cast from this movie to make it to the TV series. Charlene Fernetz (playing Aunt Zelda) and Sherry Miller (playing Aunt Hilda) were good and nicely cast, but they just weren't as memorable as Beth Broderick (playing Aunt Zelda in the TV series) and Caroline Rhea (playing Aunt Hilda in the TV series). This 1996 movie does have both Ryan Reynolds and Tyler Labine on the cast list as well.

Visually then "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" was okay. I mean, you're not in for a grand spectacle of any kind of special effects, but director Tibor Takács made it work nonetheless.

My rating of the 1996 movie "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" lands on a five out of ten stars.

I would love to own the series of films that Melissa Joan Hart has been in. IE: Sabrina Goes To Rome, Right Connections, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina Goes to Austrailia (to save the mermaid colony), and of course I would like the family to go to the theatre to see Drive me Crazy which is coming out soon. I am a disabled father of three young children and the entertainment provided by these shows are very entertaining and enjoyable.

Thanks! CJ

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.

Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, well, of course the movie is about Sabrina, a teenage girl who is sent to live with her two strange aunts. Whilst there, on her sixteenth birthday, Sabrina finds out she's a witch. At first, she doesn't know what to think, but she soon gets used to it. It's good that Melissa Joan Hart who also plays Sabrina in the TV Show, of the same name plays Sabrina here too as she really suits the role. It's a shame we don't have the likes of Jenna Leigh Green here though who played Libby Chessler for a few years on Sabrina, the TV Show, as she was really great, but fans of the show will most likely like this movie, anyway. I also think this is better then some of the other Sabrina TV movies.

I hate to admit it, but I agree with most of the comments here. Rather than Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick as the aunts, Nick Bakay as Salem, we have an entirely different cast. The only ones that are the same as they appeared on the show were Melissa Joan Hart and Michelle Beudoin. But there are quite a few notable differences. Sabrina Sawyer instead of Sabrina Spellman, a British Salem instead of the one we all know and love. The movie was okay, but it just doesn't compare to the greatness of the TV show. I recommend "Sabrina Goes to Rome" or "Sabrina Down Under." Those movies are more up-to-date.

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.

This may have not been the greatest show ever on television, but it wasn't the worst either. The funniest character was probably the cat, but everyone played a good part. So, although it was lame at times, it was OK if nothing else was on.

Freaking registration! Finally! Anyway, I loved it! I didn't know about it until after watching the series. I didn't have "DirecTV' then, and I don't have it anymore. I never had cable. I watched it on regular TV as a Disney movie, then rented it to see what was censored and what I missed. Simply put, the movie is sexier. Those of you who are spoiled may not get it. The aunts were better looking than the TV show version, no hard feelings to them! Sabrina got to do sexier activities too. (At least in the movie she never farted! I hate fart jokes!) Salem was a familiar rather than a male witch under a cat sentence. I only came here to see what her movie version's last name was. Now I know. I also had to reply, because I hate people who watch a movie just to hate it and give it bad reviews. I intend to buy the DVD of the movie now that "Columbia DVD" is offering it. I'll get the series too. Too bad MJCH is a smoker though. That is a big disappointment! :-(

"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.