Director: Susanne Bier
Writers: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett
Stars: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Joey King
Synopsis: A multi generational family of witches, cursed to be loveless for centuries, attempts to break the spell by confronting dark secrets and sacrificing for each other.
Egad! You can hear the exclamations and groans from across the many minds of movie lovers: ANOTHER legacy sequel?! Yes, yes, this has become the ultimate harbinger of vacuuming cash in the Hollywood system with films like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and, more recently, Freakier Friday, but it’s been proven a couple of times that there can be quality to mine from the legacy sequel lexicon. Top Gun: Maverick and Blade Runner 2049 are sequels that manage to extend themselves from their originals in great ways, and even a film like The Devil Wears Prada 2 was able to make great use of its 20 years between movies in relation to the journalism landscape. This makes a sequel like Practical Magic 2 even more interesting, as the latest is now aiming for nostalgia points mainly because of the titular legacy of its original. The first Practical Magic was far from beloved when it was originally released, and it took time for it to reach its eventual cult status. Even today, many view it as a fun but utterly messy tonal nightmare, so if anything, Practical Magic 2 had the chance to even surpass its original’s legacy and bring its themes of sisterhood into new light.
Unfortunately, Practical Magic 2 is about as lifeless and overwrought as some of the most monotonous legacy sequels get and makes the original look like a masterclass of pacing and filmmaking in comparison; filled with overly convoluted story elements, cozy fall vibes traded for those of an infomercial, and, most unforgivable, it’s at 130 minutes in length. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are yet again the strongest aspects, but there’s only so much that their chemistry can do with such lifelessly predictable material and jokes that barely register. Some ultra fans of the original might still walk away satisfied with enough callbacks to such fond memories, but one has to question how far this magic from the spellbook of legacy sequel laziness can truly last.
The sequel takes place in the modern day, but it first recaps where things stand after the original. The Owens family, at the end of the first film, thought they finally got rid of the curse that kills everyone they love, but once Sally Owens’ (Bullock) second husband dies, she decides to completely shut out love and magic from her life, never tell her daughters of their abilities, and make her sister Gillian (Kidman) promise to keep her secret, as well. Now, in the present day, Gillian still loves magic (and casual dating hookups), and the lovely aunts, Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Frances (Stockard Channing), still cast remedy spells for townspeople in need, while Sally still represses her true self and her now college-aged daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams).
The dam soon starts to burst on Sally’s secrets once Aunt Jet discovers a mysterious book in Sally’s library, covered with dark magic, that might have the key to finally undoing their generational curse between its pages. Not long after, when Kylie admits her love for her boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), tragedy inevitably strikes when he gets run over by a car in a traffic incident and is sent into a coma. It doesn’t take long before Kylie puts the pieces together that the rumors spread about her family being witches and their curse is real. She’s enraged at her mother for keeping things locked away and flees to London with the book of dark magic in hand to attempt to break the curse herself. With Kylie in danger of falling into dark magic, Sally and Gillian set off on a journey to find Kylie and, in the process, learn more about their family’s lineage and the further extent of their magic.
It’s a fairly obvious saving grace, to be honest, but the chemistry of Bullock and Kidman as Owens sisters is one of the few things in Practical Magic 2 that has even a faint pulse. The sisters have always been near opposites personality-wise: Gillian far more outgoing and eccentric about her heritage compared to her understandably reserved sister, but that’s part of what makes large sections of their dynamic, whether through bickering or bonding, so fun to watch. The two actresses, alongside a fine enough side role from Lee Pace as Dr. Ian Wright, produce marginal enchantment in what is otherwise such charmless material.
The original, for all its many flaws, at the very least was distinctive in its inherent nature. It was the type of film that contained the insane tonal whiplash of following up a scene of the sisters burying Gillian’s abusive ex-boyfriend with the famous midnight margaritas, but there existed such a vibe to its strange wavelength of film archetypes and cozy fall vibes that it’s not hard to see why it cultivated the following it did. Aside from one scene of Pace giving Bullock some delicious custard pie, even from the most basic of standpoints, the sequel seems to completely miss virtually any aspect of the original, as it tends to opt for colorless cinematography, laborious exposition dumps that attempt to further the lore of the Owens family, or repeated story elements that never want to stray too far from the original.
Speaking of repetition, that would be what this sequel’s strategy is, at least for most of the extended comedic bits to be found here. More often than not, a joke between the sisters or scenes where banter is stretched out often start out humorous enough, but then a line is repeated, or it runs into that ground where it makes the funnier beats of situational comedy grow tiresome, and bits that already weren’t funny (the film thinks carrying heavy luggage is so funny, for some reason) start to become entirely obnoxious. The chemistry of Kidman and Bullock can only save so many lines and those lines definitely aren’t the sink in your seat worthy Tinder jokes.
Then there’s the story itself, which has a myriad of issues, but again, so did the original; the reason this sequel gets away with far less is that its attempts at extending the emotional satisfaction of the original are fundamentally broken at the core. Neither of Sally’s daughters ever form any unique distinctions of their own from the typical legacy sequel trapping, and this is especially true for Antonia, who has so little to do in the film as a character that she could’ve been cut out with a few script tweaks and virtually nothing would change. The bigger issue, however, is the pure predictability within all the messiness; it’s admirable to see the film trying to bring a bigger emphasis to the themes of sisterhood that are at one with these two movies, but it’s nearly impossible to have any true emotional investment in anything when you can see virtually every plot beat and emotional sacrifice or discussion coming about 20 minutes before the film actually executes on it. By the time you reach the film’s piss poor CGI climax, followed by 25 minutes of epilogue that only serve to tick off legacy sequel reference moments that haven’t been hit yet in an already far too long movie, any investment has completely evaporated.
Practical Magic 2 is such an overly drab and lifeless sequel that it just might make those who still dislike the original have their appreciation grow for it. Filled with more misses than hits in the joke department, a story that’s both predictable and needlessly all over the place, and an atmosphere in both shot composition and soundtrack that can’t hold a candle (ha ha) to the first, Practical Magic 2 cast a spell of pure boredom across the legacy sequel assembly line. It’s to the point where, besides Bullock and Kidman’s enticing chemistry, it’s a wonder if even mega fans of the original could come away satisfied with such an overlong and lazy continuation.
