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I loved this movie. Feb 18, 2001 (34 of 38 found this helpful)
No matter what religion you are or how you feel about witchcraft, if you enjoy good acting & a great storyline, you'll like this film. Both Bullock & Kidman are excellent & their characters are well-drawn, likable & familiar. Most women will relate to the loves & losses, trials & errors of these independent young women.
They are, of course, different in some ways. Born into a legacy of witches & dark history, the Owens females live under a curse that destroys any man who gets too close to them. (Then again, some of us may have felt 'cursed' more than once in our love lives...)
Bullock plays Sally, the levelheaded one who is determined to have a "normal" life. She falls in love early (w/a little crafty help from the aunts -Stockard Channing & Dianne Wiest), then marries & has two daughters who look exactly like she & 'Gillie' (Kidman). For a few years, Sally is blissfully happy until the day she hears the cricket chirp - a sign of impending death. After her husband is killed, Sally falls into a depression so deep that only her sister can pull her out.
They have an unbreakable bond - not only of blood & love, but of spirit. The strength of this bond actually saves Gillie's life, when she manages to hook-up with an evil madman who 'comes back' from death. The ending is quite well done.
This was a movie about belief, trust, family & a very old fight - good vs. evil. It was also about a love strong & pure enough to break a centuries-old curse, true enough to save a woman pulled in the depths of true evil. It is touching, satisfying & emotionally uplifting. Rent it! Then rent it again for the soundtrack alone!
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AN ENCHANTINGLY ENTERTAINING FILM Oct 1, 2003 (21 of 23 found this helpful)
A truly magical ancestress, a witch in very deed, escapes the hangman's noose only to place a curse on herself and her female posterity. What ensues is an enchantingly wonderful, though sometimes dark, tale of two witch sisters who live to deal with the family curse.
Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock star as the witch sisters who approach their upbringing in magic very differently. Bullock's character, the level headed and pragmatic Sally, wants nothing more than to find true love and live a normal life while her sister Gillian (Kidman) wants to live it up and change the men in her life like most people change their socks.
The two join magical forces when one of Gillian's assorted men emerges as a sinister character played by Goran Visnjic. Their adventures seem to have gone well until a lawman (Aidan Quinn) shows up with all too many questions and seems all too familiar to Sally.
Perhaps even more appealing than Kidman and Bullock from the standpoint of screen presence, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing star as a couple of enchanting -- almost Victorian -- aunts of our two heroines that are absolutely spellbinding and unforgettable.
Practical Magic, regardless of the theme, is not a Halloween flick like Hocus Pocus and should not be avoided by any who might think that it has seasonal appeal.
An enchantingly entertaining film!
Douglas McAllister
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The BEST movie involving the Craft I've ever seen Aug 7, 2000 (17 of 20 found this helpful)
As a Wiccan, I was happily surprised at the treatment of witches in this film. Unlike the power-hungry, psycho teenyboppers of The Craft (a horrendous, disgusting film! ), this movie treated their witches with a light, humorous touch. As a romantic, I couldn't recommend this movie more.
Though the special effects were very Hollywood, you have to keep in mind that this movie was made by Hollywood. No, we can't float off roofs; no, we can't raise the dead. Still, all in all, it was a beautiful movie; an affirmation of witchiness!
There was little treatment of the religion of Wicca, but then again the women were never stated to be Wiccan. They are witches, yes, but that's not necessarily the same thing. Some of my favorite movie lines are in this movie (the other is "Ghostbusters"): "There is no Devil in the Craft."; "You can't practice magic while looking down your nose at it."; and "There's a little witch in all of us."
I love this movie. I will watch it again and again and again. And I find myself singing the songs by Faith Hill and Stevie Nicks (wonderful, magickal Stevie!) at work in the middle of the day.
Buy it. Watch it. Love it.
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Simply Magical Mar 20, 2000 (10 of 11 found this helpful)
After reading the excellent novel by Alice Hoffman, I was excited to see this movie, since rearely are there any good films made about witches, especially romantic comedies. But 'Practical Magic' is charming. Yes, Aidan Quinn could've done SO much better (he didn't seem all there), but other than that, it's great. Stockard Channing and Dianne Weist are adorable. Channing plays the delightfully abrasice aunt, while Weist is the sweet gentle one (quite a change from her role as the Wicked Queen in NBC's the 10th Kingdom). Kidman is so scatterbrained you have to love her. And, as usual, Sandra Bullock plays the reserved romantic, which suits her acting ability. You can also see ER's Goran Visjinc playing the crazed abusive boyfriend (very different from his ER character). All in all, this movie was excellent, although Quinn's performance was dull. Still worth the money.
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Good, but Far from Perfect Dec 10, 2002 (7 of 8 found this helpful)
This movie certainly is a mixed bag! Not only does it mix in several very good and poignant scenes with some utterly illogical and cheesy ones, but compresses within it no less than five plot strands!
Gillian and Sally (Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock) are the latest in a long line of witches, stemming from their ancestress Maria Owens who was banished from her village on the crimes of witchcraft. Pregnant with her lovers child, and devastated that he never came to rescue her, she placed a spell upon herself that she might never again feel the pain of love. However, this spell became a curse, and for the next three hundred years, the men that any Owens women ever loved would reach an untimely end. This is what happened to Gillian and Sally's father, and soon after their mother died also of a broken heart, leaving them to stay with their quirky aunts Frances and Jet (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest). The four make a loving family, but as Jet puts it - 'with the sweets comes the sour', as the close-knit town community despise the strange and eccentric Owens women...except of course when its in their best interests to go to the aunts for help with their life-love.
Exposed to the desparate and all-consuming nature of love that is witnesses in the aunt's customers Sally decides that she never wants to fall in love. Gillian however can't wait, and while she scampers away from the town as soon as she's old enough, Sally creates a spell in her childhood of the man she is to fall in love with - a man so perfect she feels he can not possibly exist, with qualities such as being able to flip pancakes, ride a horse backwards, and have one green and one blue eye. Her logic is if he doesn't exist, she can never have her heart broken.
Time will tell differently however - by their adulthood Sally is happily married and living a blissfully normal life with two daughters and Gillian is involved with a gorgeous -but dangerous- man. Sally truly loves her husband however, and when the curse takes effect she is devastated. Gillian has problems of her own however when her boyfriend Jimmy gets violent. When Sally goes to rescue her sister they are both kidnapped by Jimmy and manage to escape only by loading his liquior bottle with belladonna, a powerful sedative. Unfortunatly, Jimmy doesn't survive the experience.
Terrified, the sisters perform a ressurection spell, but when Jimmy returns as something 'dark and un-natural' they panic, knock him out and bury him in the backyard. But not all things stay buried, least of all Jimmy, and when a police-dectective from Arizona comes investigating his disappearence the house, Sally is petrified - especially since he has one green eye and one blue one...
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are great as Gillian and Sally, and they carry full weight of the mish-mashed storyline on their shoulders. Kidman's accent faulters at times (especially whenever she says 'aunts') but on the whole performs the carefree, irresponsible younger sister very well. Bullock as the older, more composed and sensible Sally is just as good, and the two can easily pull off the sister bond.
Unsurpringly Stockard Channing and Diane Weist create the aunts perfectly, with Channing as the sharper, more eccentric Frances and Weist as the gentle and kind Jet.
Aidan Quinn however is nothing to sing and dance about. He enters the movie quite late, and then leaves just as early and Bullock has far more chemistry with the actor playing her first husband, even though he's in the movie for an even shorter time (or maybe its just because I love their run 'n jump kiss so much!)
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