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Practical Magic Customer Reviews (7 - 9 of 41 Reviews)

Practical Magic
A real fun movie with a little based on fact. It does, though emphisize one important truth...Magic is not a toy to be played with, there are always consquences to every thing we do magic or mundane.


"Excellent Fun Loving Film
On a small island in New England, the Owens women have always been powerful, intelligent witches with a knack for the craft. Their one difficulty is love. Centuries ago, a relative who had her heart broken screamed out her pain to the ocean and it came back to haunt every Owens women who fell in love ever since, including Sally and Gillian Owens' which is how they came to live with their eccentric Aunts whom the whole city feared and avoided. Here is where they learned about the secrets of practical magic and fun things like eating chocolate cake for breakfast and midnight margaritas.

Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) is shy behind her dark rimmed glasses and doesn't outwardly use her magic except for the one time as a child when she cast a spell for the love of her life requesting traits she knew didn't exist (or did they) just so she couldn't fall in love and be hurt.

Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) is a wild spirit who retains a lot of pain behind her eyes. All she wants to do is fall in love. So she runs away in the middle of the night to find it. But before she goes her and her sister cut the palms of their hands and join them, promising to always be there for one another.

The Aunt's (Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing) feeling sorry for Sally cast a little love spell of their own creating instant chemistry between her and the delivery man (Mark Feuerstein - who doesn't get the recognition he deserves). Problem is the sisters didn't expect Sally to really fall in love with him. Two daughters later, poor Sally is moving back into the family house.

Gillian has been living the high life partying with many men until she meets Jimmy Angelov (Goran Visnjic) a Bulgarian who thinks he's a cowboy. Jimmy quickly becomes obsessed with Gillian, wanting to be with her every waking moment. Gillian actually has to resort to drugging him with Belladonna to get a break from their lovemaking. Gillian realizes things are out of control when Jimmy punches her in the face. Sally arrives just in time for a ring around the moon, bad omen.

Officer Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) shows up at the Owens house looking for Jimmy, a wanted man. At first Gary thinks the sisters may be hiding him but when he learns the truth he's torn between his belief in his badge and the growing love he feels for Sally.

The tagline for Practical Magic is "There's a little witch in every woman." And the Owens sisters are going to need all the help they can get to get rid of Jimmy and his obsession with Gillian. While music and love are the immediate themes; family, loss, being different, belief in one's self and the strength of community are others. This is an excellent fun loving film. I enjoy it every time I see it.

Not As Good As The Book But Still...
All right well I've known this movie for a long time. I believe I did watch the film first and then went out to get the book. Yet upon reading the book I realized how much different it really is. The movie really gutted out the book, only taking the main characters and one or two snippets from the book then adding the rest in as just pure Hollywood writing.
For one thing, Jimmy never goes into Gillian and possesses her. He haunts Gillian in her dreams but never personally in her body and no Gary Hallet never sees Jimmy's ghost in the book- which I thought was kind of dumb in the movie. They never tried to bring Jimmy back to life either, which I felt in the movie, although of course in Hollywood style it looked cool, was a waste of time nonetheless cause once again they had to hit him till he died again then as it said in the book went out and buried him in the backyard. Honestly they should have just did that instead of the whole bring back the dead thing. The aunts in this movie are pretty nice and warm and funny- unlike the aunts in the book who are serious and just real old. Sally did not live with the aunts, matter of fact when the love of her life in the beginning died she actually moved to another place and raised her daughters in a comunity where no one knew the name Owens and they buried Jimmy back in that yard not the aunt's. Sally doesn't go find Gillian but Gillian comes to her doorstep and has Jimmy already dead in the car because she said she probably gave him too much nightshade. Another problem was that they switched Antonia and Kylie around- Kylie was the younger one who actually saw Jimmy in the garden and Antonia was the red- haired one- I don't get why they switched that around. And they didn't highlight Antonia and Kylie personally truly at all which was a great part in the book. Then there is Gillian's eventual lover who they don't even bother to mention- which I wish they did cause Gillian deserves a happy ending as well. And also there was never anything in the book I read that said any man who loved an Owens would eventually die. That's Hollywood writing again. Sally's first love just died on accident, it had nothing to with any curse.

So yes they cut out a whole lot, more than they should have, of the book just to keep it a good family movie with a more heavy twist of magic in it than there was in the book. And I will admit that the movie is enjoyable to watch. It's just the book I found has a much better story in it, and a more realistic approach than the movie did. Overall though the essence of the story is there- that even though both sisters part their ways early in their lives, they come back to help each other for they truly did need help that only the other sister could give, and that is what makes the story, both in the movie and story- magical. And I must say Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman were to me the perfect Sally and Gillian. Especially Sandra as Sally I totally believed her in that part.

Yet I do strongly recommend the book if you loved the movie. There is a lot more to the story than the movie gives so just at least read the book to see the great parts left out of the story on this one and I do hope one day that they do remake the movie to be more accurate on the book.

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