The next entry in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort films is a journey back to 1998 with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman
T
he VHS of Practical Magic was kept at the back of the cabinet, where the not-quite-child-appropriate films lived. The cover transfixed me: the ethereal faces of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, surrounded by burning candles. At eight years old, I was instantly drawn to something I didn’t yet understand. One day, I’d be ready.
Despite opening at No 1 at the US box office, Practical Magic failed to recoup its budget and was dismissed as tonally confused. Variety called it “part comedy, part family drama, part romance, part special-effects mystery-adventure … a hodgepodge”.
Set in a fictional cosy New England town, it follows two sisters, Sally (Bullock) and Gillian (Kidman), who are raised by their non-conforming spinster aunts, and practising witches, Francis (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest), after their mother dies of a broken heart. You see, the Owens women are cursed. Any man they truly love will die.
