Jared's Pick - Movie Reviews: Practical Magic

Practical Magic

The sophomore slump strikes again. Director Griffin Dunne's first movie, Addicted To Love, was a clever little romantic comedy that was unjustly drowned under last summer's tidal wave of Titanic fever. His second outing, Practical Magic, is unfortunately receiving more press than it deserves, probably because there isn't much in the theatre that's worth a damn right now. What else are you going to see? One Tough Cop? Bride of Chucky? Night at the Roxbury? Please. Beloved looks promising, but I hear it's an intelligent, challenging film, so it might not be around very long unless Oprah's loyal followers get off the couch and support their leader.

Practical Magic has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a supernatural thriller just in time for Halloween? Is it a Wicca romance? Is it an ineffectual comedy? Is it confused, rambling, dull and utterly forgettable? Oh yes, indeed. I suppose it's just like a witches stew - there goes a chunk of bat's wing, here floats an eye of newt, now a dash of lizard brain - all unappetizing, and none dissolving into a cohesive meal.

Memo to Sandra Bullock, coming off her wilting maiden-in-distress turn in the abysmal Speed 2 and the widely unwatched Hope Floats: fire your agent, and get a better publicist. Nicole Kidman, who has shown her significant talents in other arenas, should have known better as well. The two women do the best they can with the meandering, unfocused script, even going so far as making us believe that the two could really be sisters. But they don't make us believe that Practical Magic is anything close to good.

Sally (Bullock) is the demure homebody witch who denies her talents because she wants a normal life with a husband and kids, but the sisters are cursed by an ancestor - whomever they fall in love with will die prematurely. As a child, Sally casts a spell that ensures that she will never fall in love. She lists the attributes the man of her dreams will have: two differently colored eyes, the ability to flip pancakes and a fondness for stars. Imagine the audience's shock when such a person appears on the scene once Sally is grown - who could guess that such obscure, impossible traits would exist in the real world?

Gillian (Kidman) has problems of her own - she's a slut, for one, and gets involved with a Bad Man who the sisters dispose of in a scene that's a bit macabre for the kiddies, followed by a campy resurrection, re-murder and silly burial scene. The tone of this movie is all screwed up, and won't let the audience become engaged. The Bad Man won't stay dead despite the sisters' most heroic efforts, and the movie then revolves around the sisters' efforts to exorcise the guy from their house while simultaneously avoiding the long arm of the law.

Stockard Channing and Dianne Weist as the sisters' witchy aunts provide a bit of comic relief - at least, I vaguely remember being slightly amused at one point. This film is irritatingly incoherent and largely unentertaining even in a radically-lowered-expectations sense. Worst of all is the pat ending, which is slapped on in a failed attempt to make you feel good about having wasted seven bucks. Come to think of it, some magic that really would be practical would be the ability to turn back time and get my money back.

- Jared O'Connor

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