Drawing Down the Moon is the story of Gwynyth McBride (Karina Krepp), a young woman who is so perfectly Good and Noble and Wise and Brave that she is also perfectly Boring. At the beginning of the film, she is a stranger in a small town, where she decides to start a homeless shelter (with what funds, we are left to guess). Gwynyth happens to be a witch, so she finds some difficulty being accepted by the community.
As if that weren't enough, the location she chooses for the shelter is coveted by a big, evil corporation, referred to exclusively as "The Corporation" (which I suppose would make it "The Corporation, Incorporated").
Doing The Corporation's dirty work is Joe Merchant (Walter Koenig), a brilliant mathematician-cum-crime lord -- you read that correctly -- who is working on a new application for chaos theory. The Corporation (Inc.) is funding his mathematical research in exchange for his efforts to obtain the property. To this end, Merchant sends his drug dealer underlings to harass Gwynyth.
Why The Corporation (Inc.) would leave this kind of work to drug dealers instead of lawyers is beyond me. Why they pick on Gwynyth, who doesn't even own the property, is likewise unclear. Technically, since the shelter operates rent-free, she doesn't even have a binding lease -- a gift is not a contract. But such petty details are obviously beneath the concern of an auteur like producer/writer/director/editor Steven Patterson. He needed for the Good Witch to be harassed, so she was. Logic be damned.
This harassment gives her ample opportunity to show off her mastery of Aikido, a Japanese martial art chosen for its focus on suppressing an opponent without causing serious injury. It simply would not do to show a witch actually hurting someone in self defense; that would make her less Perfect. In fact, the one time that she does injure one of the drug dealers, she immediately takes him in to give him aid. The film is so full of this sort of callow morality that it reminded me of an after-school cartoon. I half expected to hear Gwynyth address the camera with a "Hey, kids" soliloquy on the evils of violence.
Eventually, the C.E.O. of The Corporation (Inc.) tires of Merchant's excuses, and decides to sic his M.B.A.s on Gwynyth. But these are no ordinary M.B.A.s -- these M.B.A.s come packing. Such a ludicrous development might have created an aura of farce or fantasy, but it is treated with such a wide-eyed naïveté that it appears that Patterson is simply ignorant of what M.B.A.s and corporations really do.
The film's simple-minded messages are treated earnestly, but with an awkwardness that makes for all sorts of unintended comic relief. For instance, one scene has Gwynyth respond to a police officer's taunts about her faith with a reminder that her religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution. For this, he backhands her!
There is an undercurrent of preachiness in the scenes that deal with Gwynyth's faith. There is more than a little bit of disingenuousness as well, which makes the film cross the line into propaganda. For instance, the "drugs are bad" message, which Patterson pounds into our skulls with his Gwynyth-mallet, is obviously intended to give the impression that a witch would never even think about using drugs. However, truth be told, most witches I know are recreational drug users. Some consider marijuana a sacrament. Some are even dealers.
This is far from the only instance of propaganda in the film. In fact, it is so pervasive that it is difficult to single out an instance for comment. Of course I cannot say that there are no witches like Gwynyth in the real world, but I can say with all confidence that such a person, regardless of faith, would be exceedingly hard to find.
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