Practical Magic Movie Trailer. “Practical Magic” is too scary for children and too childish for adults. Who was it made for? On the one hand, you have cute witches making jokes about magic potions and herbal shampoos, and on the other hand, you have a kidnapping by an abusive boyfriend who dies of an overdose–but not for long. Moldy evil spirits rise up out of other people’s bodies, and teaspoons stir on their own.
The movie doesn’t seem sure what tone to adopt, veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance. To cue us, it puts lots of songs on the soundtrack. A movie lacks confidence when it uses music to tell us how to feel; here the music intrudes, insists, explains, and tries to force segues between events that are not segueable. Example, early in the film: An impending kiss is accompanied by “This Kiss,” by Faith Hill.
The story involves a family that has had witches for 300 years. Because of an ancient curse, all of their husbands die. The chirp of a death watch beetle provides advance warning. So it is best for the womenfolk (and in the long run this family has nothing but womenfolk) to avoid heartbreak by not falling in love.
Two sisters named Sally and Gillian (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) grow up with the curse, and Sally protects against it by casting a spell for a man she trusts will be impossible to find. He has to have one blue eye and one green eye, be able to flip pancakes in the air, and have other attributes that are not nearly as rare as Sally thinks.
Flash-forward. Sally marries. She is happy. She and her husband have two lovely daughters. One day she hears the death watch beetle beneath the floor boards. Desperate, she tears up one floor board, then another. How does this work? Your husband lives if you squish the beetle in time? Soon she has torn up the entire floor–a job that would take union carpenters hours if not days, and is not necessary, because anguish can actually be demonstrated by the manner in which you tear up floorboards, not by how many you are able to get through. The extra floorboards, like the extra songs, are overkill.
Later, Gillian sends Sally a psychic distress call, and Sally speeds to the rescue, finding Gillian shacked up in a motel with Jimmy (Goran Visnjic), a “Transylvanian cowboy” who beats her up. (She can’t marry him and trigger the beetle scenario, because she doesn’t love him.) He kidnaps the two women, and eventually supplies the evil spirit that fuels the rest of the plot. Aidan Quinn plays Gary Hallett, a cop who comes to investigate the missing Transylvanian. “Is he cute?” asks Gillian about the cop. “Yeah,” says Sally, “in a penal code sort of way.” No prizes for guessing his eye colors.
Comic relief is provided by the sister’s two maiden aunts, Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Frances (Stockard Channing). The whole movie would have been funnier if they, and not the younger women, had been involved with the Transylvanian cowboy and the cop, but that would have required wit and imagination beyond the compass of this material. Still pending at the outcome is whether pancake flipping somehow immunizes Gary from the knell of the death watch beetle.
Film Review for Practical Magic
The spoon in Sandra Bullock’s coffee goes round and round all by itself. That one, lonely little gag may just be the only supernatural gambit of any wit or imagination in “Practical Magic,” a witch comedy so slapdash, plodding, and muddled it seems to have had a hex put on it. (Did too many screenwriters spoil the brew?) Bullock, as a reluctant spell caster, and Nicole Kidman, as her sorceress sister, sport long, flowing hippie-waif tresses (earnest brown for Bullock, fiery red for Kidman), and neither actress really has much to do apart from standing around and looking terrific under all that hair.
Pop-culture witch fables, like “The Witches of Eastwick” or “The Craft,” tend to be amusing schlock entertainments that flirt with cartoon feminism. The most ingenious and subversive of the lot was probably the legendary sitcom “Bewitched,” which had the clever idea of making Samantha’s domestic life, with its literally interchangeable Darrins, silly and innocuous on purpose. When Elizabeth Montgomery twitched her nose in flirtatious triumph, she was the ’60s woman as secret goddess of her own domain.
In “Practical Magic,” Sandra Bullock is the goddess of mopey high school whining. As the result of an ancient curse, her Sally has lost her husband (anyone who falls in love with her will die), and Bullock, who needs a crisp back-talk script like the one she had in “Speed” to bring out her star crackle, looks sullen yet glazed. Based on an Alice Hoffman novel, the movie boasts a story line (and I use the term generously) that’s almost absurdly beside the point. Kidman’s thrill-seeking Gillian hooks up with a bad-egg stud (Goran Visnjic) who tries to abduct the two women.
In retaliation, they dose him with belladonna, accidentally killing him, then bring him to life with another spell, only to bury him, at which point he rises from the dead and inhabits Gillian’s body. (No, this doesn’t make any more sense when you’re watching it.) Griffin Dunne, the actor-turned-director, stages this mishegoss as if half asleep, and, just when you’re sure that things can’t get any worse, Aidan Quinn, radiating all the suave charisma of Frank Stallone, shows up as a detective who sweeps Bullock off her broomstick.
“Practical Magic” is woozy and enervated right from the start. You’re grateful for Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, who play the heroines’ aunts with some of that old mock-scandalous witchy-poo relish. (They seem to be saying, Relax, it’s just spells.) In a scene that’s too embarrassing to be dull, the four get drunk on margaritas and parade through the house, dancing “funky” to that tropical ’70s novelty hit “Coconut.” Scenes like this one have become the postfeminist equivalent of corporate nerds doing the white man’s overbite. The witch sisters get empowered, all right — into wild and crazy girls.
Practical Magic (1998)
Directed by: Griffin Dunne
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Aidan Quinn, Goran Visnjic, Caprice Benedetti, Camilla Belle, Lora Anne Criswell, Margo Martindale, Chloe Webb
Screenplay by: Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman, Adam Brooks
Production Design by: Robin Standefer
Cinematography by: Andrew Dunn
Film Editing by: Elizabeth Kling
Costume Design by: Judianna Makovsky
Set Decoration by: Claire Jenora Bowin
Music by: Alan Silvestri
MPAA Rating: Taglines: For two sisters from a family of witches, falling in love is the trickiest spell of all.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: October 16, 1998
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