Rewatched Practical Magic today for the first time in years, and it’s still a properly fun watch, even though I’d forgotten how little actually happens in it. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are the reason this one holds up. The story around them is doing a lot less work than I remembered, and that’s fine, because the two of them are so clearly enjoying themselves that it carries the movie anyway.
Watching Practical Magic now, decades after Bullock and Kidman both became the actresses everyone knows, is a different experience than catching it in 1998 would’ve been. This is early-career work for both of them, before Bullock was the reliable box-office draw and before Kidman was collecting the prestige roles she’s known for now. There’s something fun about seeing them here, playing sisters, clearly having a great time together, before either of them had anything close to the résumé they’d end up with. That chemistry was obvious to everyone the week it came out, and it hasn’t dimmed a bit on a rewatch decades later. Their chemistry is the plot, more or less. Everything else is scaffolding around two actresses who clearly like working together.
It helps that they’re playing off each other rather than off the plot. Bullock’s the sister who wants a normal life and keeps not getting one, Kidman’s the one who leans into the family weirdness instead of fighting it, and every scene the two of them share works because they’re clearly reacting to each other and not just hitting marks in the same room. You believe these two grew up in the same house. That’s not nothing, and it’s doing more for the movie than the actual story ever manages to.
The kid actress who grew up to be Dolores
One thing I hadn’t clocked on any previous watch: the little girl playing young Kylie, the niece who gets teased at school for being a witch, grew up to be Evan Rachel Wood. Which means she’s the same actress who spent years as Dolores in Westworld, a completely different kind of role in a completely different kind of show. It’s one of those “oh, that’s who that was” moments that only lands on a rewatch decades later, when you’ve seen where the career actually went. There’s no way to have known it in 1998, and that’s sort of the fun of coming back to an old movie this far removed from it.
The whole younger cast holds up better than the story around them does. The two kid actresses playing young Sally and young Kylie get a real amount of screen time early on, and the film spends a good chunk of its runtime just letting them exist in this house with the aunts, learning how the family works and what it means to grow up somewhere this odd. That stretch is doing more character work than anything in the back half of the movie, where the plot actually shows up and mostly gets in the way.
A thin story, but the family stuff is properly good
Here’s the part where I have to be honest: the story is not strong. The whole abusive-boyfriend-turned-supernatural-threat plot feels bolted on, like the movie needed some kind of external conflict to justify a third act and grabbed the nearest one available. It works well enough to get you to the end, but it’s not what anyone’s going to remember about this film, and it’s not what I was thinking about after it finished either.
What actually works, and what kept me watching without checking the time, is the family stuff. The aunts and the sisters and the way everyone bounces off each other is where the movie’s actual heart is. Watching the girls grow up in that house, watching Bullock and Kidman’s characters lean on each other as adults the way they clearly did as kids, watching the whole extended household function as one unit even though half of them can’t stand being told what to do — that’s the part of Practical Magic that’s aged well. It’s a movie about a found family that happens to also involve witchcraft, more than it is a movie about witchcraft that happens to involve a family. Get that part right and the thin plot mostly stops mattering.
I also just like that the film doesn’t take itself too seriously about any of it. Nobody’s brooding over their powers or agonizing about destiny. It’s witches making margaritas in the kitchen and hexing an ex-boyfriend because he deserves it, and there’s a lightness to the whole thing that a lot of modern witch stories seem to have forgotten is an option.
Where I land on it
I gave it a 4, and I stand by that pretty easily. The story’s weak enough that I can’t call it a 5, but the cast, the chemistry, and the family stuff are all strong enough that the thin plot never actually drags the movie down with it. It’s the kind of rewatch where you go in expecting nostalgia and come out remembering why you liked it in the first place, and I had a really good time with this one.
I went in half-braced to find it hadn’t aged well, which happens with plenty of 90s movies you loved and haven’t touched since. That’s not what happened here. Bullock and Kidman alone are worth the price of admission, and everything the movie does around the family more than earns the rest. I’d happily put it on again next year.
