October 17, 1998 -- "Practical Magic," looks like it has some of the ingredients needed for good movie, but gets lost in a murky maze of poor screenplay and direction.

Despite the fact the movie features some fine acting talent, including Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Diane Wiest, Aidan Quinn and Stockard Channing, most of the characters come off thin and uninteresting. The exceptions are Bullock, who is always likable, and Quinn who plays a memorable cop with a heart.

Sally Owens (Bullock) and her sister Gillian (Kidman), along with their aunts Jet (Wiest) and Frances (Channing) play members of a family of witches who are cursed with losing their husbands after only a few years of marriage. Sally marries, and lives happily for a few years before her husband dies in an accident, as predicted by the curse.

Gillian, on the other hand, takes a different approach to men, sampling different ones briefly and moving on before becoming attached to them. She gets into trouble with a vampire-cowboy type named Jimmy (Goran Visnjic of "The Peacemaker").

Gillian calls for Sally's help and the two have to deal with the problem of Jimmy, who becomes almost dead. Lawman Gary Hallet (Quinn) shows up looking for Jimmy. The rest is a sort of hide-and-seek game, along with a truly strange love story.

It's an odd mixture of murder, magic, comedy romance and drama that doesn't quite work. As good as the acting is, the story just didn't hold my attention because it wandered all over the place, not bothering to develop any of the characters. I was more interested in getting some nachos. The movie rates a C.

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