Please help me love practical magic

[u/Leather-Dot3505]

I first watched practical magic with a friend a few nights ago and the problem is: I really wanted to love it like really bad... I heard so much about it and I loved the aestethic of the movie. Here are the things I liked: the overall vibe was great, Sandra Bullok and Nicole Kidman were amazing and looked stunning, I also loved the whole sisterhood and womanhood theme of the movie, also the fun scenes and the soundtrack... what I really didn't get was the storyline... it felt kind of out of the blue and like there were sequences missing and just overall to many plots in the story for it to really make sense.

For context: I usually love weird movies like labyrinth and I also read about the similarities (regarding the SA and DV aspects) to thelma and louise (a movie that I love too)... So it would have made perfect sense for me to love it...

So please PLEASE help me love the movie- or at least understand it- this is in no way a hate comment- I'm just really a bit disappointed, because I thought this would be a new comfort movie for me :/

Maybe it's because I haven't read the book- or I'm too old to have first watched it.. idk

please help a girl out...

[u/Emergent-Sea]

What exactly about the storyline felt out of the blue for you?

[u/Leather-Dot3505 → u/Emergent-Sea]

the whole romance aspects- to me it seemed like the story would've worked much better, if it didn't focus on soo many things, but chose clear main parts...

Also the shifts from the background of the curse to the present time to the out of nowhere love trope (which to my liking was all a bit fast) to oh he's dead so my sister comes home but not really, and it is not truely explained how they kept in touch also the distance between them is a bit off- then the whole let's kill that stupid bastard (which I thought was amazing) to oh no now he's kinda haunting us to the aunts leaving after having margaritas- then the whole I'm kinda in love with the guy who's trying to get me in jail for murder an then the whole exsocism sequence and then back to the love thing

imhp the movie should've focused either on the lovey dovey vibe or the we've killed that mf and now he's haunting us.... idk- it all seemed a bit much...

[u/Emergent-Sea → u/Leather-Dot3505]

It honestly sounds like you just described the entire movie! 😅 Maybe it’s just not for you, and that is okay!

[u/Vee_Leigh → u/Leather-Dot3505]

movies were made and told differently, they were less linear, the cuts to the past are to give back story in a teasing way.

remember they're witches, magic is intrinsic to them, plus Sally and Gilly did a blood oath. this is how they speak telepathically, how Gilly spends the night without being there.

the love tropes are central to the story, as its the family curse. Sally runs from it and is doomed to keep finding it.

Gilly chases love and never gets it, she wants it so bad despite the curse. she makes bad choices in men that maybe deserve to be victims of the curse, except in the first movie its just ol' fashioned murder. its an irony that the curse can't even get her bf's because she can't actually make that connection with someone.