On Friday, ITV showed Practical Magic. It had a
great cast – Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman – and the premise looked
good. A family of New England witches want
to rid themselves of a curse thoughtlessly laid on them back in Sixteen-O-Whenever
that any man any of the girls in the family fell in love with would die. (There didn’t seem to have ever been any
wizards in the family; the progeny seemed to be exclusively girls.)
Well, so far, so good and the first few
minutes were definitely played for laughs in a sort of Hocus Pocus way. Then Real
Life intruded as the two sisters, Sensible Sally and Good-time Gillian, have to
face the problem of a bloke picked up by GT Gillian who is what you might call overly
intrusive in his attentions. Sensible
Sally bumps him off and then the two sisters, horrified at the thought of
murder, try and bring him back to life.
The trouble is, that the film couldn’t
decide if it was a comedy or a horror.
It veered uneasily between both, undercutting itself at every
point. The moral for writers? Decide what the tone is and stick to it. Obviously,
use comedy, suspense and even horror to liven up the story but the overall tone
should be very clearly one thing or another.
A film there wasn’t any doubt about is Captain Phillips, which Peter and I saw
last night together with the eldest, Jessica, accompanied by a pizza and a
bottle of wine. Tom Hanks gives a
wonderful performance, utterly believable as the professional merchant captain
whose ship is hijacked by Somali pirates.
The film buzzes from the word go and cracks along. A great way to spend a Saturday night!
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