There’s been a wave of Twitter chats recently around favourite bad films (Kong: Skull Island), unpopular opinions (The Lion King is mediocre animal Hamlet with mostly bad tunes) and the like. It’s a great platform for the random and reactionary. But one film kept bafflingly coming up as a “guilty pleasure” with astonishing regularity: Practical Magic.

Now, we all know why that is. We know that it doesn’t actually matter on any level whether it’s a good romantic comedy or not (it is), if the script is smart (mostly), the performances are on point (yup) or the structure makes sense (eh, more or less). What matters is that it’s a women’s film, and we can easily dismiss womeny things that men couldn’t possibly be interested in like love and magic and, um, being beaten and strangled by your insane abusive ex. Actually, it really is a women’s film. Continue reading →