I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I can watch this movie several times a year and it never gets old. This past year, I have read the book and the Prequel book, The Rules fo Magic. It's my family's annual tradition to watch this movie around Halloween. Love love love his movie!!

One has to admire the stellar cast starting with Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Aidan Quinn, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing. One has to admire the enticing photography and editing. What seems to be missing in the blend of comedy and supernatural horror is a theme. Each scene is memorable yet it seems neither a classic screwball nor a classic romantic comedy. I acquired this DVD and played it once after which I decided not to place it in my permanent collection.

Sometimes I wonder about these ratings. I see that several people gave 9 and even 10 stars to this one, which would indicate that this was one of the best movies they've ever seen. I can't bear to imagine what other movies these people have watched lol. It's based on a book I haven't read, and probably won't read either. It's labelled as a rom com, but it's not a comedy and the romance doesn't really come off very convincing due to no chemistry at all between Bullock and Quinn. So horror flick maybe ? No luck there either. It's simply too dull to be creepy. So we're left with drama and that doesn't work either since the script seems to be going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The cast is great though except for the fact that the script leaves very little for the actors to work with. Bullock plays Bullock, Channing does a good job as one of the aunts, and Kidman and Wiest are just wasting their time mostly. I guess the people who made it had a feeling that this sucked, and decided to throw in some good names to draw an audience, but they might as well have decided to bury it instead of wasting all that talent. I give a star to each of the four witches for having the guts to sign up for this rubbish.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly what went wrong with this movie. Many critics said things like "it doesn't know what it wants to be" or "it is mixing genres". I don't really see anything wrong with mixing genres. It can make a film more original and less formulaic. It just seemed that most of the cast just lacked chemistry with one another. This is odd because these are very talented actors. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock just didn't ring true in their roles as sisters. Neither did Aiden Quinn or Goran Visnjic. The real chemistry was with the older sisters, the crazy aunts, played very well by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. In spite of some good stuff, it did not coalesce into a good movie.