Practical Magic

''Practical Magic'' is a 1998 American romantic fantasy film based on the 1995 novel '' Practical Magic'' by Alice Hoffman. The film was directed by Griffin Dunne and stars Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Aidan Quinn, and Goran Visnjic.

Bullock and Kidman play sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, descended from a long line of witches. Raised by their aunts after their parents' death from a family curse, the sisters were taught the uses of practical magic as they grew up. As adults, Sally and Gillian must use their magic to destroy the evil spirit of Gillian's abusive boyfriend before it kills them.

The film was released on October 16, 1998. The film grossed $68.3 million worldwide against a $75 million budget. Upon initial release, the film received mixed reviews from critics who found the film's combination of different genres, including supernatural fantasy, domestic abuse drama, romantic comedy, and crime procedural, to be jarring. It has since gained a cult following for its cast, soundtrack, and feminist themes. A sequel, tentatively titled ''Practical Magic 2'', is scheduled for a September 18, 2026, release.

Plot

In a small Massachusetts town, the Owens family have been regarded with suspicion for over three centuries due to their ancestor Maria Owens, who survived an attempted execution for witchcraft. Heartbroken when the father of her unborn child never returned to her, Maria cast a spell to prevent herself from ever falling in love again. The spell developed into a curse upon Maria's descendants, dooming any man an Owens woman loves.

In the present, Sally and Gillian Owens are taken in by their aunts Frances and Jet after both their parents succumb to the Owens curse. As children, Sally and Gillian are frequently ridiculed by the town's schoolchildren.

After witnessing their aunts cast a love spell for a woman obsessed with her beloved, Sally casts a spell on herself to ensure she will only fall in love with a man, who possesses certain impossible traits, with the goal that she will never fall in love.

Meanwhile Gillian, witnessing the same incident, cannot wait to fall in love. When the girls are teens, Gillian elopes with her boyfriend and leaves for Los Angeles. Before she departs, she and Sally make a blood spell to always be faithful to one another.

Gillian spends the next decade moving from relationship to relationship across the country, while back in Massachusetts, Sally meets and marries a man, named Michael. They have two daughters, named Kylie and Antonia.

After Michael is fatally hit by a truck, Sally and her girls go to live with the aunts. Learning that they secretly cast a love spell on her so that she could marry and be happy, Sally says the aunts will never teach her daughters magic.

Gillian unexpectedly tells Sally that she has become involved with a dangerously abusive man, named Jimmy Angelov. When Sally arrives to rescue her sister, he holds them both hostage in his car. Sally puts belladonna into Jimmy's tequila to sedate him, but inadvertently kills him, instead.

The Owens sisters take Jimmy's body back to the aunts' house, where they attempt to resurrect him by using a forbidden spell, which causes him to return and attack Gillian. Sally kills him again and the sisters bury his remains in the garden.

Sally, Gillian and the aunts have a midnight drinking session in which Jimmy's tequila seems to be influencing them to turn against each other; the aunts leave home the following morning, leaving a message to the sisters to "clean up their own mess".

State investigator, Gary Hallett arrives from Tucson, Arizona in search of Jimmy, who is also a serial killer. Gillian tries to make him drink a potion that will make him leave them alone, but Sally's daughters realize that he is the man of Sally's childhood spell and they throw the potion away.

After Gillian and Sally fight, Sally breaks down and confesses to Gary, only to realize that he is the impossible man from her childhood love spell. Unable to deny their attraction, they kiss.

Returning home, Sally discovers Jimmy's spirit has possessed Gillian's body. Gary sees the spirit emerge. Jimmy tries possessing Gary, but is turned aside by his silver badge. Sally tells Gary he is there because of her spell, the feelings they have for each other are not real and the family curse will kill him if they pursue a relationship. Gary replies that curses only work if one believes in them, before returning to Tucson.

Jimmy possesses Gillian again and tries killing Sally before Frances and Jet return. Realizing she must embrace magic to save her sister, Sally asks the aid of the townswomen and they form a coven to exorcise Jimmy's spirit. They break the Owens curse, exorcising Jimmy's spirit and allowing the coven to exile him permanently.

In Tucson, Gary clears the Owens sisters of any suspicion in Jimmy's case and returns to Massachusetts to be with Sally. The Owens women are finally welcomed into the community by the townsfolks, who have now accept them as witches.

Cast

Production

''Practical Magic'' was filmed in part on an artificial set in California. Because the film's producers decided the house was a big part of the depiction of the Owens culture, a house to accurately represent that vision was built on San Juan Island in the state of Washington. While much of the set from California was brought to that location and placed inside the house, it took nearly a year to perfect the image of the house and the interior. The house, actually only a shell with nothing inside, was built only for this filming and was torn down after filming was completed. The small town scenes were filmed in downtown Coupeville, Washington, a Victorian-era seaside port town located on the south side of Penn Cove on Whidbey Island.

Director Griffin Dunne said he originally had a darker vision for the film. The scene with Sally and Gilly inserting needles into Jimmy was supposed to be much more disturbing and the domestic violence plot line was more intense, but the studio cut the darker material. He expressed interest in a director's cut.

According to Sandra Bullock in the DVD commentary, while filming the scene where the Owens women are drunk and slinging insults, the actresses actually got drunk on very bad tequila brought by Kidman.

The cast further stated in the film's commentary that they felt supernatural elements of the house started to affect them. Both the cast and crew claimed they heard supernatural noises while filming the coven scene at the end of the film. For the final scene with all of the townspeople at the Owens home, the entire population of the town where filming took place was invited to show up in costume and appear as townsfolk.

Music

Composer Michael Nyman's score to the film was abruptly replaced with music by Alan Silvestri for the theatrical release. This last-minute change resulted in the release of two soundtracks, although as primarily a compilation album only the two tracks of newly created material were changed. A 50-track demo (the last two tracks being "Convening the Coven" and "Maria Owens") of Nyman's score has been circulating among fans as a bootleg. The complete Nyman score runs 62:30 and contains music that would later appear, in altered form, in '' Ravenous'' and '' The Actors'', as well as a bit of his stepwise chord progression theme from '' Out of the Ruins''/'' String Quartet No. 3''/'' Carrington''/'' The End of the Affair''/'' The Claim''. "Convening the Coven", though not "Maria Owens," was subsequently reissued on '' The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980–2001'', and music that uses material related to this piece has not been used elsewhere. "Convening the Coven" became "City of Turin" on '' The Glare''.

Singer Stevie Nicks headlined the soundtrack's published advertisements, promoting her song "If You Ever Did Believe" and a new recording of her song "Crystal," both featuring Sheryl Crow on back-up vocals.

; Track listing
# "If You Ever Did Believe" – Stevie Nicks
# " This Kiss" – Faith Hill
# " Got to Give It Up (Pt.1)" – Marvin Gaye
# "Is This Real?" – Lisa Hall
# "Black Eyed Dog" – Nick Drake
# " A Case of You" – Joni Mitchell
# "Nowhere and Everywhere" – Michelle Lewis
# "Always on My Mind" – Elvis Presley
# "Everywhere" – Bran Van 3000
# "Coconut" – Harry Nilsson
# "Crystal" – Stevie Nicks
# "Practical Magic" – Alan Silvestri / "Convening the Coven" – The Michael Nyman Orchestra
# "Amas Veritas" – Alan Silvestri / "Maria Owens" – The Michael Nyman Orchestra

Certifications

Reception

Box office

''Practical Magic'' opened at #1 with $13.1 million in ticket sales. The film went on to gross $68.3 million worldwide, less than its $75 million production budget.

Critical reception

''Practical Magic'' received negative reviews from critics upon release, who panned its inconsistent tone and script. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 26%, with an average score of 4.8/10, based on 101 reviews. The site's consensus states: "''Practical Magic''s jarring tonal shifts sink what little potential its offbeat story may havethough Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock's chemistry makes a strong argument for future collaborations." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average, gives a score of 46 out of 100 reviews based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of 'B-' on an A+ to F scale.

Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave ''Practical Magic'' a negative review, calling it "a witch comedy so slapdash, plodding, and muddled it seems to have had a hex put on it." Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' spoke of the film's unsure tone, "veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance", and opined that the film "is too scary for children and too childish for adults".

Garth Stahl of the ''Hartford Courant'' was more positive, noting that women in dark comedy and depictions of sisterhood are rare in film. He wrote ''Practical Magic'' "has its flaws. Some scenes are weak, occasionally lines are a little muddled, and there is some plot underdevelopment. Yet it is daring and fun — a frolic for two charming actresses and a dapper film premise". He concluded "The main source of attraction is undeniably the enchanting and witty witchcraft. It is simultaneously what makes the Owen sisters outcasts and what makes them special. With a few very sharp scenes, including a jazzy dance sequence, 'Practical Magic' is worth t It is a step toward allowing women to assert themselves in the genre of dark comedy. Now isn't that practical."

Reviewing the film for Amazon, Tom Keogh said, "The film has a variety of tonal changes—cute, scary, glum—that Dunne can't always effectively juggle. But the female-centric, celebratory nature of the film (the fantasies, the sharing, the witchy bonds) is infectious, and supporting roles by Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as Kidman and Bullock's magical aunts are a lot of fun."

The film has acquired a cult following over the years. Writing about ''Practical Magic''s legacy in 2018, David Sims of ''The Atlantic'' discussed how the film centers relationships between women through the Owens bloodline as well as in the final scene involving the town's women uniting to free Gillian from Jimmy's control. He described the film as a mainstream studio feature "that wove dark themes about gender and power into an ostensible crowd-pleasing comedy", qualities that made it unusual for its time and have contributed to its staying power.

Audience viewership

''Practical Magic'' entered the Max top 10 films chart, securing the #5 spot just one day after its October 1, 2024 premiere on the streaming platform.

Accolades

Sequel

In June 2024, it was announced that a sequel was in development. Bullock and Kidman will return to produce the film with Di Novi and were in talks to star in it. Later that same month, Nicole Kidman confirmed that she and Sandra Bullock would reprise their roles in the sequel. Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the screenplay for the original film, would return to write the script. Griffin Dunne hinted that a woman will direct the sequel, while he will serve as an executive producer.

In July 2024, Akiva Goldsman later confirmed that he would be returning to write the sequel. While specific plot details remain under wraps, the sequel will be based on Alice Hoffman's 2021 novel ''The Book of Magic'', the fourth installment in her ''Practical Magic'' series. Although the timeline is still uncertain, in August 2024, producer Denise Di Novi is optimistic about beginning production next year. In January 2025, Susanne Bier was reportedly in talks to direct the sequel. In February 2025, Kidman mentioned that the sequel was "moving ahead rapidly". Three months later, it was announced that Bier would direct the film, which is scheduled for release on September 18, 2026.

In other media

In 2004, Warner Bros. and CBS produced ''Sudbury'', a television pilot written by Becky Hartman Edwards and directed by Bryan Spicer starring Kim Delaney in the role played by Bullock in the film and Jeri Ryan in the role played by Kidman. The series, named for the Sudbury, Massachusetts location of the novel and film, was not picked up.

In 2010, Warner Bros. and ABC Family attempted to develop a prequel television series.

See also

* List of ghost films

References

External links

*

Promotional website
(archived)
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{{Akiva Goldsman

1998 films
1998 comedy films
1998 fantasy films
1998 romantic comedy films
1990s American films
1990s English-language films
1990s fantasy comedy films
1990s female buddy films
1990s feminist films
1990s romantic fantasy films
American fantasy comedy films
American female buddy films
American feminist films
American romantic comedy films
American romantic fantasy films
Films about curses
Films about sisters
Films about witchcraft
Films based on American novels
Films based on fantasy novels
Films based on romance novels
Films directed by Griffin Dunne
Films produced by Denise Di Novi
Films scored by Alan Silvestri
Films set in Massachusetts
Films shot in Washington (state)
Films with screenplays by Akiva Goldsman
Films with screenplays by Robin Swicord
Village Roadshow Pictures films
Warner Bros. films
English-language romantic comedy films
English-language romantic fantasy films
English-language fantasy comedy films