There’s something about a coven of witches that seemingly suggests that 90s era, supernatural sisterhood is a can’t-miss recipe for cult immortality. First, there was the beloved kid’s film Hocus Pocus, that saw Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy cause all sorts of pantomime mischief which actually managed to score a legacy sequel a couple of years ago. Next came something for the goths, as 1996’s The Craft threw a further bone to the weird girls in a teen horror flick that actually pre-dated Scream. Finally, we got Practical Magic, which saw Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play witchy sisters as they struggle with a family curse; and of the three movies, it seems that it’s this one that recieved the most devout following. However, I have to say, when it comes to spell casting being a metaphor for female empowerment, I guess I’m more of a Witches Of Eastwick kind of guy – because the only spell this toothless, formless film managed to cast on me, was regrettably one of abject boredom.
Over three centuries the women of the Owens family have been percucuted by the people of Massachusetts due to the supernatural practices of their ancestor, Maria Owens. However, while she managed to escape the hangman’s noose, she was heart broken when she was ultimately abandoned by the father of her unborn baby – which led to her putting an anti-love curse on her own bloodline.
In the present day (or 1998, judging by some of the fashions), we find that the curse has been something of a thorn in the side of her relatives as it’s since morphed into a prophecy that dictates that any man loved by an Owens woman is doomed to die. This was put into action earlier when Sally and Gillian are orphaned by a dead dad and a died-of-a-broken-heart mother while they were still kids and went to live with their eccentric, witchy aunts, Frances and Jet. However, after falling in love and having two children, the curse strikes again when Sally’s beloved husband is killed in a freak accident, leaving her to raise her two kids, Kylie and Antonia and renouncing the spells she was taught in her youth.
But while Sally stayed in a small town where people still cross the street to avoid her kooky heritage, Gillian eloped to Los Angeles to enjoy as many relationships as she possibly could. However, her wayward, fun-loving attitude catches up with her when she’s forced to return after receiving a beating from her volatile boyfriend, Jimmy Angelov, a sadistic bully who proves to be pretty damn dangerous. However, after Sally arrives to get her sister out of such a worrying predicament, the fates conspire to have the sisters accidently poison Angelov with belladonna, and after clumsily casting a resurrection spell to reverse their unintended manslaughter, things get even worse when they have to bury him in the garden (Pet Sematary rules, baby). But with Jimmy’s evil seeping into the house, can the sisters reverse their mistake while staying true to their witchy roots?
Before I get started, I suppose I’d better clarify that unfeasibly twee films with virtually no pacing really aren’t my cup of tea, and I found the storytelling and tone of Practical Magic to be neither particularly practical or magical. And yet, I know that there are people out there that adore this film the same way I adore some of my silly little cinematic loves, so I utterly understand why some would be drawn so tightly to a messy little fantasy comedy that seemingly only wants to wrap itself in your arms like a warm, comfortable blanket. However, with that being said, while I’m always glad when a film finds its audience, that doesn’t mean I’m personally going to enjoy a movie with all the storytelling issues of a drunk aunt telling a jumbled tale that seemingly refuses to have any real point.
Directed by Griffin Dunne, who is probably more famous for being lycanthrope chow in An American Werewolf In London, or enduring the night from Hell in After Hours, you can probably tell if Practical Magic is for you if you can make it through the first, lore-heavy, thirty minutes, that insists in laying out the entire history of the characters in such a sloppy way, you’ll wonder if the film has actually started yet. Somehow simultaneously rushed and yet still incredibly slow, it often feels that there was no actual script at hand, but rather the crew was literally trying to plan the entire filming schedule around someone skimming through Alice Hoffman’s source novel and hoping for the best. Simply put, while you’re fed a lot of information, it never feels like anything is actually happening throughout Practical Magic’s first third, until the story finally grasps hold of the thread of Gillian’s abusive boyfriend and finally starts packing some much needed incident onto those bare, unfocused, narrative bones.
Once the sisters murder Goran Visnjic’s flamboyant abuser, the movie suddenly snaps into focus, like it’s suddenly realised what kind of movie it actually wants to be, and all that rambling preamble (that Dunne has presumably used to created a warm, kooky, atmosphere) finally starts to make sense. However, regardless of how heavy some of the story is (domestic abuse, murder) the movie still refuses to give any of it and dramatic weight, which leads to a frustrating lack of urgency – even in the face of some final act possession (the power of quaint compels you). Characters who could sort all this out in a minute prove to be unwilling to help for unconvincing plot reasons (should the aunts really be so glib about the spirit of a woman beater inhabiting their house?) and characters responsible for causing the mess prove to be a “comedic” hinderence. In fact, I found virtually every member of the cast quite annoying for various reasons, so huge kudos have to go out to the cast for making any of the characters even remotely tolerable.
Bullock works overtime in order to give the heartbroken Sally some dimension and predictably nabs all the best lines, while Kidman plays the flaky, consequence-free sister a little too well. But while the duo of Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest (who spends part of her screentime dressed as Marlon Brando from The Island Of Doctor Moreau) are frustratingly dropped in and out of the film whenever it’s relevant to the plot, it’s tough to make a film completely without merit when you have a cast such as impressive as this. Once again, I understand that some will see Dunne’s approach as a friendly, safe space, where the scary bits aren’t that scary and any problems can be ironed out with a good natured, climactic gathering of supportive women, but I’m afraid that the quaint, softly-softly approach means that this edge-free world just feels like the girls from The Craft are going through the menopause.
The starry cast do their best, but Dunne’s unfocused storytelling and unbothered pacing leads to a story that leaves out the toil and trouble, in order to make being a witch as quaint and safe as humanly possible. While I can understand the cult following (there’s certainly plenty of films I love that others would be bewildered by), Practical Magic is just too sweet and fluffy to bewitch me adequately enough…
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