Practical Magic 2 review

PRACTICAL MAGIC 2: 

THE ONLY REAL MAGIC HERE IS SANDRA BULLOCK AND NICOLE KIDMAN’S CHEMISTRY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in Practical Magic 2

 

            Well, I hope this is everything you’ve “Witched” for, Practical Magic fans. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side, Gravity, The Lost City) and Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge!, Babygirl) are back as witch sisters Sally and Gillian Owens in Practical Magic 2, the “much-anticipated?” follow-up to the 1998 romantic fantasy film, Practical Magic. Time for me to be an asshole: I do not get into the first Practical Magic. I don’t think it’s a terrible movie or anything, and Bullock and Kidman do have strong chemistry onscreen, but I think it’s very generic, and I’ve seen other movies that did sort of thing better (Give me Witches of Eastwick any day over this). 

            Despite it not being especially liked by critics and performing adequately at the box office, it gained a cult following, so that’s more than enough reason to do a sequel decades later with Bullock and Kidman reprising their roles and Susanne Bier (Things We Lost in the Fire, Love is All You Need, Bird Box) taking over directing duties from Griffin Dunne. I had zero expectations going into this even after revisiting the first, but perhaps this will be the Practical Magic movie that wins me over…it isn’t…in fact, it’s worse than the first. 

            I’ll give this movie credit that Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman still work well together, and I got a few laughs here and there, but this is a colossal mess of a sequel that’s more cursed than the Owens family themselves. It’s clearly a movie made because people remember the first,t and there are plenty of callbacks to the earlier film, but in terms of the movie itself, it ranges from standard sequel fare to laughably embarrassing at the drop of a hat. 

            The film follows Sally (Bullock) and Gillian (Kidman) Owens living their lives.s, Sally has given up on witchcraft to focus on raising her daughters, Kylie (Joey King-Ramona and Beezus, The Act, The Princess) and Antonia (Maisie Williams-Game of Thrones, Mary Shelley, Early Man), after the death of her second husband. But when Kylie falls for a young man named Gideon (Xolo Maridueña-Cobra Kai, Blue Beetle, Smurfs (2025)), thus triggering the family’s love curse and putting Gideon in a coma, she ventures into the world of witchcraft to break the curse with Sally and Gillian following behind. 

            The film also stars Stockard Channing (Up Close & Personal, The First Wives Club, Must Love Dogs) reprising her role as Aunt Frances, Dianne Wiest (Edward Scissorhands, The Birdcage, Sisters) reprising her role as Aunt Jet, Lee Pace (The Hobbit trilogy, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Invincible) as Ian Wright, Solly McLeod (Fear, The Dead Don’t Hurt, Last Swim) as Tom Lockland, and Katy Wix (Twelve in a Box, Magicians, Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans) as Paula.

            Overall, Practical Magic 2, despite Bullock and Kidman bringing a lot of energy to the film, is an awkward, unnecessary, and overlong continuation of a movie that’s not even that great to begin with. The film blurs the line between being enjoyably bad because of the hilariously sappy dialogue and just bad and boring; not helping matters is a Return of the King-style ending that takes forever to wrap up. 

            It just feels like a movie that was desperately trying to get off the ground, with three writers penning the script and the studio cramming all their ideas into one confused, bloated mess that lacks what made the first…eh, charming-ish. The film is 2 hours and 10 minutes,s and it doesn’t need to be that long; there is a lot you can easily cut out, particularly in the last third, and flesh the ideas and characters out better,r and this probably would have been fine. 

            I wasn’t really getting into the film that much aside from when the dialogue became Tommy Wiseau’s The Room quali,ty and I started laughing at the cheesy things coming out of people’s mouths. There’s a whole romantic line involving molecules that made me laugh so hard in the theater to the point where it makes Robin Williams’ romantic dialogue from Flubber sound charming by comparison. 

            I guess I also have to give this film props for completely abandoning the appeal of the first Practical Magic and having a villain with a plot to destroy the world, and the witches have to stop him. Practical Magic 2 has a f*cking action sequence involving magic and a ritual where Joey King’s Kylie is about to be sacrificed; it’s beyond stupid, and I wish I'd gotten myself drunk before I went to see it. 

            Normally I would classify this as a “So Bad It’s Good” movie because of how hilariously awful a lot of the dialogue is and the film’s ridiculous climax, but there’s also another half that’s just standard, slow, and dull, with the characters not being especially funny or charming. That,t accompanied by the overlong runtime, completely sinks the movie and just makes it a film I’d only rewatch in parts and only the enjoyably bad moments. 

            The only real positive I have is that Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman still have good chemistry together despite the terrible material; I can see them trying to make it work, and I’d love to see a project with them in the leads outside of this franchise sometime. I enjoy seeing them together and hearing them bicker with each other…though there’s this bizarre running joke of Kidman trying to pants Bullock; heartbreak feels good with a scene like that. 

            Yeah, I just want to wrap this review up: Practical Magic 2 might be enjoyed by devotees of the first or those just wanting to see Bullock and Kidman back together. I just found it to be an overlong and incoherent slog with bursts of unintentional hilarity; the magic is dwindling, and it needs a new formula.