"At age 12 I finally watched the film and it felt like it was made for me. I recognised and appreciated, unlike its critics, the hodgepodge. It is not so much a chick flick with magic as a genre chimera: romance, gothic melodrama, small-town satire, ghost story and feminist parable. I grew up in Hong Kong during the 1990s, a city defined by its complex history with traditions shaped by diverse communities and displaced refugees like my Beijing-born father."
"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."
A VHS copy of Practical Magic sat among not-quite-child-appropriate films, its candlelit cover drawing attention. The film opens at No 1 in the US but failed to recoup its budget and was often called tonally confused. The story follows sisters Sally and Gillian, raised by unconventional witch aunts, whose family carries a curse that any man they truly love will die. The film mixes romance, gothic melodrama, small-town satire, ghost story and feminist parable, creating a deliberate hodgepodge that resonated personally during a childhood in 1990s Hong Kong amid cultural collision.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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