# Practical Magic (1998)

### reviewed by
Jamie Peck

PRACTICAL MAGIC Reviewed by Jamie Peck

Rating: ** (out of ****) Warner Bros. / 1:50 / 1998 / PG-13 (sensuality, violence, language, thematic elements) Cast: Sandra Bullock; Nicole Kidman; Stockard Channing; Dianne Wiest; Aidan Quinn; Goran Visnjic Director: Griffin Dunne Screenplay: Robin Swicord; Akiva Goldsman; Adam Brooks

Double, double, toil and trouble. Cast two luminous leading ladies as sibling witches and watch the cinematic cauldron bubble - or so one would think. But even with the full-fledged charms of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman (_especially_ Nicole Kidman) firmly in place and working to maximum potency, their vehicle "Practical Magic" still comes off as half-baked hocus-pocus. Is it a black comedy, a family drama, a supernatural thriller or all of the above and more? Thanks to its wildly inconsistent tone, we may never know.

For a while, the movie is adept enough to juggle genres, but something wicked appears to have taken over scripting duties around its midsection. Not a whole lot of "Practical Magic"'s supernatural scenario is adequately explained, and it's a gargantuan goof-up when a film is given the opportunity to create its own rules and then refuses to play by them. Underwritten and overplotted, "Practical Magic" ultimately vexes more often than it hexes, culminating in supremely foolish business like straight-faced demonic possession and an exorcism that includes the neighborhood PTA. The varied light-and-dark agenda really clashes in moments like these.

When all else fails, at least Bullock and Kidman make an enchanting pair of contemporary sorceresses. They're respectively cast as Sally and Gillian Owens, sisters in a bloodline of white magic-dabblers long plagued by a centuries-old curse - that any man who falls in love with a gal from their clan is guaranteed an untimely demise. Widowed Sally has learned this the hard way and moves in with her dotty aunts (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest); free-spirited Gillian spares herself the potential heartache by engaging only in quickie relationships all over the map.

Gillian's latest squeeze is a studly cowboy (Goran Visnjic) who hails from Transylvania and drinks like a fish. A volatile encounter that involves him, them and some belladonna sets off an ugly chain of incidents that eventually gains the attention of an affable cop (Aidan Quinn); he may or may not be Sally's soul mate, but they fall for each other either way. It's here where "Practical" begins to lose the magic - not only does this budding romance lack both chemistry and credibility, it seems like a complete afterthought. And the Quinn character has other problems to boot: Could his ensuing detective work possibly be any shoddier?

So "Practical Magic"'s strange brew never quite comes to a boil, despite consistently spellbinding performances and the promise of its first half. If the filmmakers had cleaned up the scatterbrained story threads and provided stronger explanations for some of their weirder tangents, this movie could have been an enjoyable little date flick. But the spells cast by the nifty premise and the adorable cast end up enchanting all by themselves, leaving "Practical Magic" to finish in a hazy place somewhere between the bewildered and the bewitched.

© 1998 Jamie Peck E-mail: jpeck1@gl.umbc.edu Visit The Reel Deal Online: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~jpeck1/ Special thanks to Hoyts Theatres! "'StarGate' is like a film school exercise. Assignment: Conceive of the weirdest plot you can think of, and reduce it as quickly as possible to action movie cliches. If possible, include sun god Ra, and make sure something gets blowed up real good." -Roger Ebert on "StarGate"

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