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.
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 Gillian 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. The two have two young daughters, Kylie and Antonia. After Michael is fatally hit by a truck, Sally and her daughters return to live with the aunts. Learning that the aunts 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 she has become involved with a dangerously abusive man named Jimmy Angelov. When Sally arrives to rescue her sister, Jimmy holds them both hostage in his car. Sally puts belladonna into Jimmy's tequila to sedate him, but inadvertently kills him instead. The sisters take his body back to the aunts' house, where they attempt to resurrect him 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 Gary drink a potion that will make him leave them alone, but Sally's daughters realize 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 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 Jimmy's 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 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 townsfolk, who now accept them as witches.
Cast
Sandra Bullock as Sally Owens, a witch who becomes widowed after the Owens curse kills her husband. She abandons magic and doesn't allow her daughters to practice it.
Nicole Kidman as Gillian Owens, Sally's free-spirited sister who embraces her heritage, leaves their small town and becomes the victim of an abusive relationship.
Lora Anne Criswell as young Gillian Owens
Goran Visnjic as James "Jimmy" Angelov, Gillian's lover. Originally from Bulgaria, he's an abusive alcoholic with a cowboy style who kidnaps the sisters, and is killed by them in self-defense, twice.
Stockard Channing as Frances Owens, aunt of Sally and Gillian, who tends to be frank and assertive.
Dianne Wiest as Bridget 'Jet' Owens, aunt of Sally and Gillian, who is kind and gentle.
Aidan Quinn as Investigator Gary Hallet, from Tucson, Arizona, who questions Sally and Gillian in the disappearance of Jimmy Angelov and falls in love with Sally.
Caprice Benedetti as Maria Owens, the first witch in the Owens family and the one who casts the spell that curses all her descendants.
Evan Rachel Wood as Kylie Owens, Sally's elder daughter, who lives with her mother and the aunts after the death of her father, Michael. She looks and acts like Gillian.
Alexandra Artrip as Antonia Owens, Sally's younger daughter, who also lives with her mother and the aunts after the death of her father. She has dark hair and a spunky personality.
Mark Feuerstein as Michael, Sally's late husband and father of Kylie and Antonia Owens. He is a victim of his wife's family curse, which results in his untimely death when their daughters are young.
Peter Shaw as Jack, Sally and Gillian's father, who died from the Owens curse when they were children.
Caralyn Kozlowski as Regina Owens, Sally and Gillian's mother, who committed suicide after losing her husband to the Owens curse.
Chloe Webb as Carla, a good friend of Sally's, who works at her shop.
Lucinda Jenney as Sara, one of the town women, who initially fears the Owens family but later responds to Sally's call for help.
Margo Martindale as Linda Bennett, another friend of Sally's who also works at her shop.
Martha Gehman as Patty, one of the town women who responds to Sally's call for help.
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.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]
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.[8]
Composer Michael Nyman's score to the movie 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.
Practical Magic opened at #1 with $13.1 million in ticket sales.[10] The film went on to gross $68.3 million worldwide, less than its $75 million production budget.[2]
Critical reception
Practical Magic received poor reviews from film critics. Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes gives the film a 24% approval rating based on 98 reviews, with an average rating of 4.80/10. The site's consensus states: "Practical Magic's jarring tonal shifts sink what little potential its offbeat story may have -- though Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock's chemistry makes a strong argument for future collaborations."[11] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100, gives a score of 46 based on reviews from 22 critics.[12] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.[13]
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."[14]Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said that the film "doesn't seem sure what tone to adopt, veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance."[15]
Accolades
Year
Nominated work
Award
Result
1999
Funniest Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Dianne Wiest
Best Performance in a Feature Film – Supporting Young Actress Evan Rachel Wood
Nominated
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.[16]
^"Practical Magic: A Victorian House Fit for a Witch". Hooked. 25 October 2009. Retrieved 31 October 2012. It looks like a real house that was built in the 1850s, but it's really just an "architectural shell" that took 8 months to build and was (sadly) destroyed after filming was over.
^"Design". Practical Magic. Amas Veritas. Archived from the original on 6 May 2012. Retrieved 31 October 2012. Though this Victorian house looks as if it's been in place for a century, it's actually an architectural shell.
^Ebert, Roger (October 16, 1998). "Practical Magic". rogerebert.com. Sun-Times Media Group. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
