With the new sequel out, I checked out the original 1998 brew of family drama, horror, comedy and romance about two witchy sisters, and enjoyed it far more than expected.
Back in the day, Practical Magic opened to tepid critical reception and equally tepid box office, but has since found an appreciative fan base and become something of a cult favourite. This miraculous second life passed me by, but as it often happens these days, the creatively bankrupt state of cinema inspires me to skip endless sequels and remakes, and makes me curious about the originals instead.
This is a tale of a family curse suffered by the women in the Owens family, all because of their distant witch ancestor and her broken heart. Any man loved by an Owens woman is doomed to die, though this remarkably pragmatic and self-preserving curse lets them live long enough to father the next generation. Sisters Sally and Gillian (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) grow up under its shadow, having lost both of their parents. They’re raised by their two eccentric aunts (Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, scene-stealing and underused) in a small New England town, where their oddball witchy ways are treated with suspicion and fear by the locals.
The sisters are like chalk and cheese. Sally is the sensible one, craving normality and eager to fit in, gifted in magic but reluctant to use it. She marries a good man and they have a couple of lovely daughters, until surprise, one day Sally hears the chirping of the deathwatch beetle, the customary warning that the curse is about to kick in. Sally’s husband dies, and her grief prompts the return of Gillian, the wild child who left home years ago to party her way through the USA.
Trouble is, Gillian’s latest paramour, a “Transylvanian cowboy” called Jimmy (Goran Visnjic), turns out to be a violent abusive psycho. The sisters resort to desperate measures to get rid of him, both natural and magical, and thus attract the attention of a law enforcement officer played by Aidan Quinn. This stoic yet sensitive dreamboat looks increasingly like the impossibly perfect man Sally invoked in her spell as a little girl, in order to protect herself from falling in love.
Practical Magic got lambasted upon its release for its wildly inconsistent tone, and I can’t disagree with the critics on this one. Even the opening flashback scene feels strange: an impending hanging of a woman is accompanied by a weirdly cheerful whimsical score (the hanging has a happy outcome, but still). A cutesy scene of a whole family dancing around the kitchen table (who actually does this?) somehow exists in the same movie with scenes of horrific physical abuse. Some films take a gamble mashing several genres together and come on top, but here the same gamble results in a poorly paced mess.
That said, the movie was still a quirky, enjoyable mess, I suspect partly because I’m at the right age to get misty-eyed about the 90s, and Faith Hill’s This Kiss alone makes me smile fondly. There’s also the appealing small town setting, Sandra Bullock in her adorable klutzy 90s phase, and vibrant, willowy Nicole Kidman in a more fiery, showy role. The two actresses play wonderfully against each other and portray a very believable sisterly bond. In fact the entire film has a very cozy, feminine atmosphere, where female solidarity will always come through in the end. I watched the scene where sisters and their aunts enjoy some midnight margaritas half rolling my eyes, half thinking that this actually looks nice and I’d like to have some.
In short, Practical Magic wins purely on feels and vibes, and sometimes that’s enough to overrule my critical brain.
P.S. I probably wouldn’t have recognised very young Evan Rachel Wood as one of Sally’s daughters if I didn’t spot her name in the opening credits, but she already shows some of the intensity that would mark her career.
P.P.S. It was a bit disappointing to learn that the enchanting gothic-cute Owens house was just an exterior built for the movie, and demolished after. I still want to visit New England one day though.
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