Some films are built to be argued about. “Practical Magic” is built to be lived with, and twenty-eight years on it is still the one people put on when the evening turns cold.
The Owens Sisters Carry the Whole Film
Sandra Bullock plays Sally Owens and Nicole Kidman plays her sister Gillian, and the bond between them is the reason the film endures. Bullock plays the sister who wants an ordinary life. Kidman plays the one who runs at everything headlong. Neither performance looks down on the other, and the film is patient enough to let them simply be sisters — bickering, covering for each other, sitting at a kitchen table at three in the morning.
That kitchen is the heart of it.
Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, as Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet, give the household its warmth and most of its humour. They raise the girls on chocolate cake for breakfast and refuse to apologise for any of it. Griffin Dunne directs, from a script by Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman and Adam Brooks, and his best decision is to keep returning to that house.
A Story That Moves Between Moods on Purpose
The plot turns when Gillian’s partner, Jimmy Angelov, played by Goran Višnjić, dies, and the sisters try to bring him back. Aidan Quinn arrives as Gary Hallet, an officer whose questions grow sharper as the secrets pile up.
Critics at the time complained that the film would not sit still — that it moves from comedy to romance to something darker without warning. That is true, and it is the point. The film behaves the way a family does. A funeral becomes a joke becomes a genuine fright becomes a night of drinking, because that is how bad weeks actually go.
What it gets right, and keeps getting right:
- Two lead performances that treat the bond between sisters as the main love story
- A house and a kitchen so warmly drawn they became the reason people return to it
- Aunts who are funny without being written as fools
- A willingness to be gentle, which was out of fashion in 1998 and is not now
Where the Paper Stands
We rate it 8.5 out of 10. That is our own regard and we will own it plainly: the wider critical score sits far lower, and the reviews of the day were cool. The film has outlived them. It found its audience slowly, on television and at home, among people who wanted something warm rather than something clever.
The Facts
- Directed by Griffin Dunne, from a script by Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman and Adam Brooks
- Runs 104 minutes
- Romance, fantasy, comedy
- Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Goran Višnjić, Aidan Quinn
A film about two sisters who keep choosing each other does not need to settle on one mood to be worth your evening. This one settles on the sisters, and that has proved to be enough.
