Practical Magic

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

Bullock and Kidman play sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, who have always known they were different from other people. Raised by their aunts after their parents' death, the sisters grew up in a household that was anything but typical—their aunts fed them chocolate cake for breakfast and taught them the uses of practical magic. But being a member of the Owens' family carries a curse: the men they fall in love with are doomed to an untimely death. Now adult women with very different personalities, the quiet Sally and the fiery Gillian must use all of their powers to fight the family curse and a swarm of supernatural forces that could take away all the Owens' lives.

Plot
Maria Owens, a young witch, is exiled (with her unborn child) to an island in Massachusetts. When her lover does not rescue her, she casts a spell to stop herself from ever falling in love again. The spell becomes a curse, affecting all future generations of women in the Owens family: any man who falls in love with an Owens woman will die. In the present, Gillian and Sally Owens, are taken in by their maternal aunts Frances and Jet (Bridget) after the death of their parents. Gillian's talents lie in charm and persuasion, while Sally is more gifted in witchcraft. After witnessing their aunts cast a spell for a woman obsessed with having a specific man's love, Gillian is titillated at the idea of falling in love and Sally, terrified, casts a true love spell (Amas Veritas) to protect herself, summoning a man who possesses qualities that cannot possibly exist.

Years later, Gillian makes a blood-oath to Sally, promising to return, and leaves for Los Angeles. Sally marries Michael, a local produce seller, and they have two daughters, Kylie and Antonia. They plan to open a botanical shop, but Michael dies after being hit by a truck. Sally realizes that her aunts cast a spell so she would be happy, not expecting Sally's love to trigger the curse. Devastated, Sally and her daughters return to the Owens home to live. Sally decides that she and her daughters will not perform magic. As Gillian begins a relationship with Jimmy Angelov, she can feel Sally's grief, and realizing that Sally really needs her, she returns to Massachusetts.

After Gillian helps her realize that she is neglecting her daughters due to her disabling grief, Sally wakes to find her sister gone. With a new-found resolve, she opens the botanical shop she had planned with Michael and tries to help her daughters navigate living in a town where the citizens openly taunt them for being witches.

Gillian calls Sally to come and rescue her after Jimmy becomes erratic and abusive, but after Sally arrives, he kidnaps them both. Sally puts belladonna into Jimmy's tequila, inadvertently killing him as he tries to strangle Gillian. Gillian decides that they must use magic to resurrect Jimmy so that neither of them will be guilty of murder. They return home, then resurrect him using their aunts' spellbook. Jimmy attempts to kill Gillian again immediately after being revived, and Sally is forced to kill him again to save Gillian. They bury his body in the garden. Signs begin occurring, indicating that something is wrong, yet they do not confess to their aunts when confronted. Frances and Jet leave after giving Kylie and Antonia protection wards, telling Antonia to give Sally and Gillian the message, "Clean up your own mess!"

Investigator Gary Hallett arrives from Tucson in search of Jimmy, who is revealed to be a serial killer. Gary begins to suspect that Sally and Gillian killed Jimmy, so Gillian, Kylie and Antonia create a potion to banish Gary. However, the girls realize he is the man described in young Sally's true love spell, and dispose of the potion. While watching the girls toss the potion-laced pancake syrup into the sea, Gary (and a horrified Sally and Gillian) watch a frog regurgitate Jimmy's ring. Gary takes it as evidence and departs, angry and confused. Later, after fighting with her sister, Sally insists Gary record her testimony. While in his hotel room, she sees a letter she had written Gillian just before rescuing her from Jimmy. She realizes he read it many times. Unable to deny their feelings for each other, they kiss and Sally realizes that he was there because of the Amas Veritas spell. Sally bolts, shaken.

Returning home, Sally discovers that Jimmy's spirit has possessed Gillian's body and Gary (following Sally) witnesses Jimmy's spirit emerge. Jimmy attempts to kill Gary by reaching into his chest, only to be hurt by Gary's silver star-shaped badge, and disappears. Sally tells Gary that he is there because of her spell and the feelings they have for each other are not real. Gary replies that curses are only true if one believes in them and reveals that he also wished for her, then leaves.

Jimmy possesses Gillian again and attempts to assault Sally, who knocks her out just before Frances and Jet return. Sally, realizing she must embrace magic to save her sister, asks the aid of the mothers on the school's emergency phone tree, and they form a coven to exorcise Jimmy's spirit. Sally makes them stop when she sees that the effort is killing Gillian. Sally, inspired, opens the magic protection circle surrounding the possessed Gillian, and entices Jimmy to assume control over Gillian's body. Swiftly, Sally repeats her blood-oath with Gillian, again slicing their palms to join their blood in promise. The Owens curse is broken and Jimmy's spirit is exorcised and permanently banished. Gary clears the sisters of any suspicion of wrongdoing in Jimmy's death. Sally comes to a decision, encouraged by Gillian, to take a risk on love again. Sally sends out a message via a leaf on the wind, and in Arizona, Gary senses her call. He returns to Massachusetts to be with Sally. Halloween is celebrated, and all the Owens women, demonstrating their powers by leaping off their roof and landing safely, are lovingly accepted by the townsfolk.

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 on the main street of Coupeville, Washington, a Victorian-era seaside port town located on the south side of Penn's Cove on Whidbey Island.

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 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.

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


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

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 film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 20% approval rating, based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/10 and the site's consensus states: "Comedy, romance and horror mix with unsatisfying results." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, gives a score of 46 out of 100 based on reviews from 22 critics.

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 said that the film "doesn't seem sure what tone to adopt, veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance."

In other media
In 2004, Warner Bros. and CBS produced Sudbury, a television pilot written by Becky Hartman Edwards, 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 reboot television series.