Practical Magic
USA 1998
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New England, the 1690s. Maria Owens, pregnant and unmarried, is accused of witchcraft by her Puritan neighbours and banished to an offshore island. She puts a death curse on any man who is ever loved by an Owens woman. Nearly 300 years later the curse kills Sally and Gillian Owens' father. The girls are sent to live on the now populated Maria's Island with their aunts Frances and Jet, both locally infamous witches. The girls are taught the powers of magic by their aunts and ostracised by the fearful locals.
As adults, Gillian leaves home while Sally stays to live a normal life. Gillian is attracted to a mysterious stranger called Jimmy Angelov. Under the influence of her aunts' magic, Sally falls for and marries a local man, Michael. When she begins to love Michael truly he's killed by a speeding truck. Jimmy starts to abuse Gillian physically. Sally tries to rescue her and ends up accidentally killing Jimmy with an overdose of magic sleeping powder. Using their powers Sally and Gillian try to resurrect Jimmy but fail. They bury him in the family garden. A special investigator, Gary Hallet, questions the women about Jimmy's disappearance. Gary is suspicious of the sisters, yet he and Sally fall in love. Gillian becomes possessed by Jimmy's undead soul. Sally asks all the local women to come round and form a coven. Together they perform an exorcism. Jimmy's soul is banished and the townsfolk are reunited with the Owens women.
Review
With feel-good sisterly values, Practical Magic, like Hope Floats and Moonlight and Valentino before it, is an attempt at updating the 'women's picture', in this case by injecting the supernatural into the genre. Here director Griffin Dunne (Addicted to Love) and screenwriters Robin Swicord (Little Women), Akiva Goldsman (The Client) and Adam Brooks (Beloved) have taken the melodramatic staple of active females and passive males to a problematic conclusion with the 'Owens Family Curse': most of the movie's male characters are killed off. Yet unlike Practical Magic's classic antecedents - King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937) or even Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959) - Dunne has no idea of how to play his all-female environment. He consistently ignores the inner tensions of this powerfully matriarchal world in favour of disposable saccharine emotions and glib music-promo aesthetics.
Taking his cue from the glamorous domestic witches of Bell Book and Candle (1958), and the more recent films The Craft and The Witches of Eastwick, Dunne renders the supernatural powers of his protagonists subordinate to their function as traditional heroines. Their magic becomes simply an accessory, a showy distraction. Hence Sally's coffee spoon stirs by itself, yet only so she can get busy writing her lovelorn letters. Similarly, though Gillian's magic can raise the dead, she seems strangely unable to use it to sort out her relationship with her abusive boyfriend Jimmy. Consequently, the few moments of crowd-pleasing effects that eventually arrive in the climactic exorcism jar uncomfortably with the film's otherwise quotidian tone.
Dunne's reaction to this debilitating 'love without lovers' paradox is to shift the focus to random, isolated events, letting the narrative momentum grind to a halt. His version of the women's picture is an endless series of female-bonding tableaux. And so, under a folk-rock soundtrack from Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, we see Gillian driving across the US, Sally setting up a health store, Sally dancing around the house with Gillian and her aunts and Sally connecting emotionally with the local women.
With most of these scenes bathed in a gelatinous yellow glow, and with protagonists Kidman and Bullock engaged in endless outfit changes and makeovers, the movie is certainly easy to watch. But without any single overriding dramatic motor to guide it, this prettiness soon becomes repetitive and ultimately irksome. Like Sally and Gillian, immaculately attired and roaming around their pristine island home, Practical Magic is essentially a movie that's all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Credits
- Producer
- Denise Di Novi
- Screenplay
- Robin Swicord
- Akiva Goldsman
- Adam Brooks
- Based on the novel by
- Alice Hoffman
- Director of Photography
- Andrew Dunn
- Editor
- Elizabeth Kling
- Production Designer
- Robin Standefer
- Music/Music Conductor
- Alan Silvestri
- ©Warner Bros. (US/Canada/Bahamas/Bermuda)
- ©Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited (all other territories)
- Production Companies
- ©Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited (all other territories)
- Warner Bros. presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures a Di Novi Pictures production in association with Fortis Films
- Executive Producers
- Mary McLaglen
- Bruce Berman
- Co-producer
- Robin Swicord
- Production Associate
- Scott A. Elias
- Unit Production Manager
- Mary McLaglen
- Location Manager
- Elizabeth Matthews
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- Tom Proper
- Associate:
- Carolyn Jean White
- Assistant Directors
- Josh McLaglen
- Michael Moore
- Rich T. Sickler
- W. Scott Wolf
- Script Supervisor
- Susan Malerstein-Watkins
- Casting
- Amanda Mackey Johnson
- Cathy Sandrich
- LA Associate:
- Elizabeth Lang Fedrick
- NY Associate:
- Mercedes Danforth
- Camera Operator
- Mitch Dubin
- Steadicam/Camera Operator
- Chris Haarhoff
- Visual Effects
- Supervisor:
- John Scheele
- Production Supervisor:
- Christopher Sanger
- Art Director:
- Lance Hammer
- Visual Effects/Animation
- Cinesite Digital Studios
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Jay Riddle
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Scott Dougherty
- Composite Supervisor:
- Gregory Liegey
- CG Supervisors:
- Fernando Benitez
- Serge Sretschinsky
- Paint Supervisor:
- Corinne Pooler
- Rotoscope Supervisor:
- Karen Klein
- Visual Effects Editor:
- Rod Basham
- CG Animators:
- Greg Butler
- Derrick Carlin
- Gokhan Kisacikoglu
- Jason MacLeod
- Cesar Velazquez
- Compositors:
- Michael L. Castillo
- Mark Lewis
- Marcel Martinez
- Craig Mathieson
- Sean O'Connor
- Jason Piccioni
- David Rey
- Patrick Tubach
- Tom Zils
- Visual Effects Production Co-ordinator:
- Jessica Trento
- Additional Visual Effects
- CIS Hollywood
- Executive Producer:
- C. Marie Davis
- Rose Bush Sequence
- Tippett Studio
- Driving Sequence
- Hammerhead Productions Inc
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Burt Dalton
- Foremen:
- Rodney M. Byrd
- Albert Delgado
- Donald E. Myers Jr
- Additional Editing
- Craig McKay
- Architectural Consultant
- Stephen Alesch
- Set Designer
- Aric Lashee
- Set Decorator
- Claire Jenora Bowin
- Costume Designer
- Judianna Makovsky
- Costume Supervisor
- Margo Baxley
- Key Make-up
- Pamela Westmore
- Key Hair Stylist
- Janine Rath
- Main/End Title Design
- Nina Saxon
- Titles
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Opticals
- Cineric Inc
- Orchestrations
- William Ross
- Music Supervisor
- Danny Bramson
- Music Editors
- Kenneth Karman
- Nic Ratner
- Bunny Andrews
- Additional:
- Dan DiPrima
- Adam Kay
- Music Score Programming
- David Bifano
- Music Score Recordist/Mixer
- Dennis Sands
- Music Consultant
- Lynn Geller
- Soundtrack
- "This Kiss" by Robin Lerner, Annie Roboff, Beth Nielsen Chapman, performed by Faith Hill; "Got to Give it Up" by/performed by Marvin Gaye; "Is This Real?" by Lisa Hall, Nip Heely, Paul Hopkinson, Steve Ludlam, performed by Lisa Hall; "Black Eyed Dog" by/performed by Nick Drake; "Near You" by Francis Craig, Kermit Goell, performed by George Jones, Tammy Wynette; "A Case of You" by/performed by Joni Mitchell; "Everywhere" by James DiSalvio, Jayne Hill, Haig Vartzbedian, Adam Chaki, performed by Bran Van 3000; "Nowhere and Everywhere" by Michelle Lewis, Wayne Cohen, performed by Michelle Lewis; "Always on My Mind" by Wayne Thompson, Johnny Christopher, Mark James, performed by Elvis Presley; "Coconut" by/performed by Harry Nilsson; "Crystal", "If You Ever Did Believe" by Stevie Nicks, performed by Sheryl Crow with Jeff Trott
- Production Mixer
- Richard B. Goodman
- Re-recording Mixers
- Tom Fleishman
- Peter Waggoner
- Greg Watkins
- Robert Schaper
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Robert Hein
- Dialogue Editors
- Jac Rubenstein
- Dan Korintus
- Glenfield Payne
- Sound Effects Design
- Eugene Gearty
- ADR
- Mixer:
- David Boulton
- Thomas J. O'Connell
- Supervising Editor:
- Marissa Littlefield
- Editors:
- Hal Levinsohn
- Gina Alfano
- Foley
- Artist:
- Marco Costanza
- Mixer:
- Bruce Pross
- Supervising Editor:
- Ben Cheah
- Editors:
- Jennifer Ralston
- Frank Kern
- Kam Chan
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Jeff Dashnaw
- Jim Halty
- Animal Handlers
- Paul 'Sled' Reynolds
- Washington Unit:
- Anne Gordon
- Dana Dube
- Cast
- Sandra Bullock
- Sally Owens
- Nicole Kidman
- Gillian Owens
- Dianne Wiest
- Aunt Jet
- Stockard Channing
- Aunt Frances
- Aidan Quinn
- Gary Hallet
- Goran Visnjic
- Jimmy Angelov
Evan Rachel Wood- Kylie
- Alexandra Artrip
- Antonia
- Mark Feuerstein
- Michael
- Caprice Benedetti
- Maria Owens
- Annabella Price
- lovelorn lady
- Camilla Belle
- Sally, aged 11
- Lora Anne Criswell
- Gillian, aged 10
- Margo Martindale
- Linda Bennett
- Chloe Webb
- Carla
- Martha Gehman
- Patty
- Lucinda Jenney
- Sara, as an adult
- Cordelia Richards
- Nan
- Mary Gross
- Debbie
- Jack Kirschke
- Old Man Wilkes
- Herta Ware
- Old Lady Wilkes
- Ellen Geer
- pharmacist
- Courtney Dettrich
- young Sara
- John McLeod
- puritan minister
- Trevor Duncan
- Sara's boy
- Colby Cochran
- ice cream boy
- Caitlyn Holley
- ice cream girl
- Ken Serratt Jr
- lovelorn's lover
- Rich Sickler
- Dwight
- Jeanne Robinson
- Deborah Kancher
- PTC moms
- Peter Shaw
- Jack
- Caralyn Kozlowski
- Regina
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- 9,365 feet
- 104 minutes 4 seconds
- Dolby digital/DTS digital/SDDS
- Colour by
- Technicolor