Practical Magic stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witch sisters, Sally and Jilly Owens. As young girls, they are sent to live with their eccentric old aunts, Fran (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest), after the death of their parents. It seems the Owens girls, along with all of the women in their line, suffer from a centuries old curse that makes it impossible for them to happily fall in love. If they do, they'll be happy for a time, until the call of the death watch beetle comes, and their true love dies. Following her mother's death of a broken heart, young Sally casts a spell of her own - for the perfect man, one so unusual that he could never really exist.
The girls grow up and Sally continues to grow in her witchcraft, yet Jilly perfects a craft all her own, beguiling men with her beauty. She escapes the Aunts' house with Sal's help to run off with the first in a long series of boyfriends. Sally, content enough to stay at home and live with the aunts, slowly becomes more and more sad, wishing for relationships like Jilly experiences over and over. Then one day it happens - she instantly falls madly in love with a local man and the two get married and have two beautiful daughters. Naturally, the man dies since Sally falls for him. At the same time, Jilly, who has fallen for a very controlling man named Jimmy Angelov (Goran Visnjic) realizes he is dangerous and asks for Sally's help in escaping. Things go horribly wrong and Angelov ends up dead, so the sisters decide to bring him back with a spell, but that doesn't quite work out as they had hoped either. When the aunts bail on them and leave them to fix their own mess, things get complicated, especially when a handsome detective named Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) comes sniffing around for Angelov, who is wanted in the disappearance of another young woman. As Jilly and Sally try to juggle being haunted by Angelov, the snooping Detective Hallet, and a town that has always shunned and feared their family, expect things to get pretty ridiculous. Practical Magic is a romance one moment, a horror the next, and even a comedy and drama, all wrapped up into one. Overall, a good movie with excellent acting and a fantastic cast.
The Witches of Eastwick is a classic Jack Nicholson film that brilliantly portrays that old adage, be careful what you wish for. Alexandra (Cher), Jane (Susan Sarandon) and Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer) are three divorced friends who long for the perfect man. During a night of wishful thinking and drinking, the trio come up with their description of the perfect man and lo and behold, the next day a wealthy and mysterious stranger rolls into town. Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson) wastes no time in seducing each of the women, mesmerizing and even transforming them into his very own family, or as the town sees it, trio of concubines. What starts out as a never-ending party gets a little on the weird side as odd happenings start occurring. The town's matriarch, Felicia Alden (Veronica Cartwright), who is also married to Sukie's boss at the newspaper, seems determined that evil has crept into the town of Eastwick in the form of Van Horne and she means to oust him, along with making the lives of the three women pretty miserable. When Felicia turns up dead, the three friends start to wonder if she wasn't too far off base. But Mr. Van Horne isn't the type to be ignored and he means to have his "family" of lovers back together and soon, so he can spawn children. When the ladies decide to team up to banish him, they are going to have the fight of their lives. Just as Practical Magic was a mash-up of different genres, so was The Witches of Eastwick, but it was a much darker film, on the whole, and there was very little comedy in it.
Overall, the transfer to Blu-ray for both films was very good. The Witches of Eastwick is over 10 years older than Practical Magic, yet both look and sound great. The scenes of picturesque New England in both movies look really good and as a whole package, if you are looking to add these movies to your collection simply on looks alone, the Blu-ray version would be the way to go. There are no special features, however, so if that's what you are looking for, look elsewhere. But if you want a duo of magical movies, both with a similar theme but with very different feels, the Practical Magic/The Witches of Eastwick: Comedy Double Feature would be a solid choice.
