Box Office
Flop · 0.6xBudget$75M
Worldwide Gross$46.7M
Practical Magic keeps its 2/10 woke score by centering a classic witch-family story of sisters, curses, and romance with zero identity politics or activist framing. It stays neutral entertainment built on plot and characters, not messaging.
Practical Magic (1998) centers on sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, raised in a witch family under a generational curse that dooms their romantic partners, who must use magic to confront an evil spirit after Gillian's abusive boyfriend dies.
The story follows classic fantasy-romance tropes of family legacy, sisterly bonds, and overcoming personal curses through love and practical spells, with no foundational premise built around identity politics or systemic oppression narratives. Strong female protagonists and the emphasis on sisterhood emerge naturally from the witch-family premise and 1990s fantasy conventions rather than serving any external ideological agenda. Casting choices feature Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, and Aidan Quinn without any race, gender, or sexuality alterations to established characters or any forced diversity mandates.
Light themes of abuse and female resilience function strictly as plot devices inside the curse narrative, never expanding into activist framing or lecture moments that would disrupt the entertainment focus. The overall approach keeps progressive messaging minimal and incidental to the core story.
We've run a full content analysis on Practical Magic and scored it 2/10 on the woke scale. Read our detailed breakdown above to see exactly what we found.
Our analysis checks for themes like identity politics, race-swapping, gender ideology, environmental activism, anti-religious messaging, and other progressive agenda elements. The score breakdown above shows which specific categories were flagged and how heavily they factor into Practical Magic's overall score.
Wokeometer focuses on ideological content rather than traditional ratings (violence, language, etc.). Practical Magic is rated PG-13. For a full picture, combine our woke analysis with the age ratingto decide if it's right for your family.
We evaluate media across multiple ideological categories on a 0–10 scale. Scores of 0–3 mean story-first, 4–6 have moderate elements, and 7–10 flag heavily agenda-driven content. Learn more about our methodology →
Methodology: Each score synthesizes audience discourse, critic and aggregator reception, and press coverage — weighed against the work itself, not any single source.
See how this title scores across all 5 woke subcategories with detailed explanations.
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