In 1968, a young Hero Boy is forced to go live with his grandma (Octavia Spencer) after losing his parents in a car accident. She tells him that witches are real and they hate children. As a child, she lost her friend when a witch turned her into a chicken. She gives him a white mouse. She takes him to a seaside hotel for an escape hoping that witches would not search there since black children are rarely at the luxury hotel. Unfortunately, the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) has gathered her followers to present a potion to turn all children into mice.

This is the second film adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's book. The 1990 adaptation stars Anjelica Huston and is a fan favorite. It's probably a fool's errand to try to do another. The only reason is to upgrade the mice with CGI and that's often a bad idea. The charm of the old animatronics is actually more timeless than CGI which ages over time. It does inject some American racial divide into the story but the movie drops that interesting take rather quickly. The one awful thing it does is to replace the greatness of Huston with a terribly weird Joker-smiling Hathaway. It is bad. There is no good reason for this movie and watching it proves that.