In a sentenceThe house is lovely, the aunts are lovelier, and the plot turns up late and drunk
The Owens women have been witches for generations and cursed for most of them: any man one of them loves dies young. Orphaned early, Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) are raised in a clapboard house above a small harbour town by their aunts Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest), who sell love spells to the neighbours. As a girl, careful Sally casts a spell so she will never fall in love; wild Gillian leaves town with a boy. Years on, Sally has married Michael (Mark Feuerstein) and has two daughters, Kylie (Evan Rachel Wood) and Antonia (Alexandra Artrip), when the curse finds him. Then Gillian rings, frightened of her boyfriend Jimmy Angelov (Goran Višnjić), and Sally drives through the night to fetch her.
Plays from YouTube when you press play; nothing loads from them until then.
Griffin Dunne’s version of Alice Hoffman’s novel has two good sisters, two better aunts and a house we would move into tomorrow. It also has three screenwriters and about as many films inside it, and never picks one.
Practical Magic is about two sisters who cannot fall in love without killing somebody, and it cannot decide whether that is funny, sad or frightening. Griffin Dunne directs from Alice Hoffman’s novel, and three screenwriters, Akiva Goldsman, Adam Brooks and Robin Swicord, share the credit, which is usually a sign that a script has passed through several hands with different plans for it. It shows. There is a warm small-town comedy about a family of witches, a drama about sisters who need each other, a romance, and a horror film about a man who will not go away, and in 104 minutes none of them is given enough room to finish.
The best thing in the film is the house. Robin Standefer’s production design gives the Owens women a clapboard place on a bluff with a conservatory full of herbs, a kitchen the size of a chapel and a staircase built for slow entrances, and Andrew Dunn lights it as if it were always four o’clock on an October afternoon. Judianna Makovsky puts the aunts in velvet and the sisters in slips and cardigans. We would move in tomorrow, curse included, and we suspect that a good deal of the film’s long life comes down to other people feeling the same.
Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, as Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet, are the reason the comedy works. They hex the neighbours’ children on request and treat the family curse as an inconvenience, like damp. Channing does the sharp one and Wiest the soft one, and they finish each other’s sentences in a way that suggests sixty years of shared kitchens. The film gets worse every time it cuts away from them.
Sandra Bullock plays Sally as the one who stayed, running a shop and pretending to be ordinary, and Nicole Kidman plays Gillian as the one who ran, all red hair and bad boyfriends. They are good together. There is a scene of the two of them lying on a bed, talking about the men they have lost, that sounds like a real conversation between real sisters, and the film could have used ten more like it. The scene people remember is the midnight margaritas, the four women dancing round the kitchen table, and we were charmed by it against our better judgement; it is loose and slightly drunk and it is the one time the film stops arranging its actresses and lets them play.
The trouble arrives with Jimmy Angelov (Goran Višnjić), Gillian’s boyfriend, a man with a cowboy hat and a temper. Once he is in the story the film turns darker, and Dunne stages his scenes with real menace, but he stages them in the same warm light, so a frightened woman in a car is followed within a minute by the aunts being whimsical about a broom. Elizabeth Kling’s cutting is not the problem; the material does not join. Alan Silvestri’s score does its best to knit the pieces together and the pop songs do the rest, cued so that a Stevie Nicks track tells us how to feel before the scene has had a chance to. The second half takes a turn we will not describe, except to say that we felt our own jaw set during the last twenty minutes, which the film means as a rousing coming-together and which plays as a set piece somebody remembered they had promised.
Aidan Quinn arrives in the second half as Gary Hallet, an investigator asking questions about Jimmy, and he is decent in the part. His scenes with Bullock are the part of the film that most resembles the poster, and they have the least room of anything here. Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip, as Sally’s daughters Kylie and Antonia, get a few good lines and a lot of standing in doorways.
The witch comedy has a long history, from I Married a Witch to The Witches of Eastwick, and the good ones pick a tone and hold it. Practical Magic wants the sweetness of the first and the bite of the second and a weepie besides, and it settles for being pleasant. It has stayed loved, and we can see why: the house, the aunts, the margaritas. Those are real pleasures. They are also about forty minutes of the film.
See it on a wet autumn afternoon with someone who will not mind you talking during the plot. The 12 certificate is about right; there are two or three scenes that would frighten a small child and nothing that will trouble anyone else.
The reviews split almost down the middle, and even those who enjoy Practical Magic call it fluff. Most critics agree the cast is the best thing in it: Bullock and Kidman keep it moving, and the senior witches played by Wiest and Channing draw praise from admirers and detractors alike. The soft, glossy photography is noted on both sides, not always as a compliment. The two most recent reviews are among the kindest, which suggests its standing has improved with time.
The reservations cluster on tone. Nearly every critic notes that it is three films at once, a sisterhood drama, a horror picture and a romance; the disagreement is whether that is charming or a muddle. Roger Ebert finds it too frightening for children and too childish for adults, and objects to soundtrack songs doing the story’s emotional work. Time Out goes furthest, calling the performances hammy and the story heartless. The scores run from 20 to 80.
The critic finds the 1998 Griffin Dunne film still enchants on its big-screen re-release ahead of a sequel. They single out its romcom quirk, buttery cinematography and stabs of black comedy as making it a zany gem.
Read the full review →Maslin calls the film a bouncy, bubble-brained guilty pleasure with a transcendently silly story line and excessive froufrou touches. She singles out the stars' svelte charm and the delightful comic support from the senior witches as the elements that still provide escapism.
Read the full review →The critic describes the film as an uneven chick movie that shifts between cute fluff, sisterhood drama, and supernatural elements, calling it a no-brainer with ruffles. Bullock and Kidman are praised for making it fly along with strong comic support, while Dunne is noted for directing prettily in service of fanciful romantic escapism.
Read the full review →Levy describes the film as slight and undernourished, a hodgepodge that is not entirely satisfying on any level due to conflicting script sensibilities. He singles out the strong ensemble, particularly Nicole Kidman's sexy performance and the supporting turns by Wiest and Channing, as the picture's best asset.
Read the full review →Ebert finds the film tonally uncertain, veering between horror, laughs and romance in a way that makes it too scary for children and too childish for adults. He singles out the intrusive soundtrack songs that are used to force emotional cues and segues the story cannot support on its own.
Read the full review →Mathews finds the movie has no more practical magic than a souffle chef, with the filmmakers concentrating on emotional trappings rather than cheap tricks. He singles out the big stars' inability to conjure enough to make the witchcraft story work despite the hype.
Read the full review →
Bell, Book and Candle · not on Fi1m yetKim Novak’s Greenwich Village witch; the same premise played straight and much drier.
The Witches of Eastwick · not on Fi1m yetThree women, one devil, and a film that commits to being nasty.
The Craft · not on Fi1m yetThe teenage version, meaner and more honest about what power does to friends.
Kiki's Delivery ServiceA young witch finds a town and a job; Miyazaki’s gentlest film.
Fried Green TomatoesWomen, a kitchen and a body nobody mentions; the same recipe without spells.
