(1998) Practical Magic

There’s a LOT going on in this movie.

It manages to be light-hearted and simultaneously has the darkest plot imaginable: two unsuspecting women are being harassed by Jimmy, a Croatian man.

Although he is really trying to sound like a, in their words, “Dracula cowboy from Transylvania”, he sounds like Borat and Papa Lazarou had a child. The latter only because there’s a scene where he’s repeatedly yelling “I want you to be my wife!” while choking Nicole Kidman. Weak character, poor performance, would not recommend.

Seriously, what is up with that accent?

Luckily, these unsuspecting women are also WITCHES! The cool kind, not the ones that weigh the same as a duck that you build bridges out of. Sandra is the better witch, of course, giving Nicole Kidman an excuse to have a resting witch face and make poor dating decisions.

So, when Jimmy oversteps his boundaries, they kill him. Twice. Yes, they kill him, bring him back to life, and then kill him again. He had it coming because not only is he Croatian, but is also a serial killer.

They bury Jimmy under a rosebush and continue to do usual witch things, but their peace gets interrupted by an investigator who is trying to find Jimmy and bring him to justice.

This investigator turns out to be Sandra’s perfect man, who she summoned as a child using poetry and 90s CGI. So he makes sure to cover up the murder and they live happily ever after. It’s so great when things work out!

Final Verdict

Cute movie, but it just barely earns a 10/10. The magic stuff is much more digestible than what happens in Love Potion No 9, and it even has the amazing character actress Margo Martindale, but the plot just gets in the way of Sandra being a witch. She could have ruled the world, but she had to deal with Nicole’s shitty zombie boyfriends instead.

Category	Rating
Story	06 / 10
Characters	08 / 10
Transylvanian Borat	02 / 10
Sandra Bullock on-screen-time	09 / 10
Margo Martindale	10 / 10
FINAL RATING	10 / 10