For those who dont know, Practical Magic is a book turned movie starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. The story is about two sisters who come from a long line of witches, cursed to have true love end in the death of their lover, murder a man and the elder falling for the cop investigating. Please keep in mind, this is a romcom!
This movie is my ex-wife’s favorite. So even though I despise it, Ive seen it quite a few times. Im going to give a brief rundown (complaining all the way, Im sure), and give some alternative decisions i feel wouldve made the film more watchable without changing too much, even.
We open with a flashback to a witch hunt hanging, this is the ancestor of our protagonists. She escapes, but is banished to an island and the married man she was having an affair with doesn’t come visit her. So instead of cursing him, his wife, of the folk that hunted her down, she curses her own descendants. That’ll show her daughters’ daughters’ daughters not to fall in love!
Now we meet Sally and Gillian as little girls. Theyve been sent to live with their aunts. There they discover theyre witches and the curse. Sally thinks the curse is horrible and makes a spell about these arbitrary rules for who she falls for. Gillian decides shes going to sleep with everything not nailed to the floor. All these factors go into the towns folk thinking theyre witches and resent the family.
Years later, Sallys husband dies; hit by the slowest, least thrwatening truck in cinema history. The curse. And seeing how their parents died and later, the curse has strong ties to the auto industry. Anyway, Sally and her 2 girls move back with the aunts.
Gillian has hooked up with an obsessive psychopath so Sally drives to her… in Arizona… from Maine… anyway, they end up accidentally killing Johnny and decide to raise him from the dead. So they drive with his corpse… from Arizona… to Maine… and perform a forbidden spell that they dont take seriously, so they have to kill the just revived Johnny again. I promise the rest is quick.
They bury him in the backyard but a US Marshall is looking for him and fits the criteria of Sallys childhood spell. Johnny comes back as a ghost and possesses Gillian, so the aunts call members of the town (the ones that hate them, remember) to exorcise the spirit, which they are super excited to help out with. This also breaks the love curse…somehow. Now the town loves them and the sisters learned to get away with murder. FIN.
How to fix this just enough to make it passable?
1. The husband should have had a blameless death: stroke, heart attack, a trip, something happenstance. It’s a curse, not “your husband is incredibly clumsy”.
2. The town shouldnt hate the family, but find them very strange. They can hate Gillian, shes very open about how many married men she actively tries to hook up with. This will also be easier to believably get them to accept the exorcism offer. Getting Sally to explain that this is her sister, and they all have that person theyd do anything for.
3. Have the curse resolve itself through the exorcism. Say that to kill the spirit a witch must bind her powers, get rid of them, to vanish a ghost. Have this also be the only way the curse can be lifted. Have Gillian sacrifice her own powers so Sally can love and she pays for this whole ordeal.
Thank you for sitting through this rant. At least this time I offered solutions to some problems i had with the film i dislike. Depending on response, I may try doing more of these ‘fixing’ posts. Thank you all once again, and I promise to try posting more frequently (please, thats not a threat! Dont runaway!)
Texan, y’all! Cinema glutton, horror enthusiast, sci-fi nerd, comic lover, and I like Japanese stuff too (the culture, kaiju, martial arts, samurai, some anime). Love me some Mario, Sonic, and Pokemon.
