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A Reel Life film section
Practical Magic movie review

Embrace your inner witch

In a beautiful old house on the American coast live a family of talented women. Descended from a witch who her townspeople attempted to hang, and who was deserted, pregnant by her lover, the daughters of the family have a twofold inheritance.

On the one hand, they practice magic -- they can blow candles to light them and cast love spells. On the other hand, their ancestress cursed every man who would ever dare to love and Owens woman through all the generations.

What are two sisters to do?

The eldest sisters (Dianne Weist and Stockard Channing) are incredibly well-preserved wise woman, dressed out of time and walking the streets of the local town without receiving friendly greetings. They take in Jilly (Nichole Kidman) and Sally (Sandra Bullock) after the death of their parents. In time Jilly rebels against the resentment and name-calling of the locals and flees to a partying life. Sally falls in love with a local man and has two daughters of her own.

And then one day Sally hears the death watch beetle and it is time for her to return to the house by the sea with her own girls.

Practical Magic has a lot to offer the audience. There is charm and humour, three generations of actresses who play their talented/cursed characters with clarity and affection. Channing and Wiest are enormously attractive 'crones', Kidman and Bullock are loving and battling sisters, and the group having Midnight Margaritas is wonderful to behold.

Goran Visnjic is a believably attractive but toxic boyfriend, and Aidan Quinn plays the laconic lawman-of-Sally's-dreams with a good dash of disbelief.

Plus there's the house and garden, beautiful, with a greenhouse, a true family kitchen and a feeling of history.

If this is a "Chick Flick" it is the best kind -- where the craft is a mechanism and woman gather together and release their fear of their own power.

Witchcraft has long been a metaphor for the power of women -- white magic or black. In Practical Magic the warring of good versus evil is not overshadowed by the special effects, and the true magic is ultimately the power of compassion.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in Practical Magic