Practical Magic 2

The long-delayed sequel, which is becoming a genre unto itself, exists mainly to borrow the idea of “fan service” from sci-fi and superheroes and applying it to millennial nostalgia for HBO favorites of yore. And while Practical Magic 2 doesn’t scrape the barrel as desperately as Coming 2 America or Happy Gilmore 2 — two films that essentially bring back the cast to repeat the same gags, interspersed with lots of footage from the original movie — this reunion of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as a pair of witchy sisters fails to enchant.

It’s at this point that I’m required to inform you that I wasn’t particularly entranced by 1998’s Practical Magic, so feel free to take the rest of this review with a grain of salt (thrown over the left shoulder) if you’re a superfan of the Owens family. The appeal of that first film is obvious, however, from the chemistry between its talented leads to its cozy, autumnal New England setting (filmed in the Pacific Northwest).

The setting is back in this sequel, but the chemistry is lacking: Bullock’s reliance upon her Clinton-era shtick of “bright but bumbling, Type-A yet still stammeringly hesitant” feels phoned-in here, as though both actress and character were aware they should have outgrown this bit by now. As for Kidman, playing the lustier and less pragmatic sister, she overdoes it, bringing the kind of manic, desperate energy of an emcee trying to get a convention full of insurance adjusters up on their feet and dancing.

When we last left the sisters nearly three decades ago, they appeared to have defeated their family’s centuries-old curse, which decreed that any man loved by an Owens woman was doomed to die. No such luck, as it turns out: Practical Magic 2 begins just months later, with a mournful Sally (Bullock) burying her dream guy (the New Mexico lawman played in the first film by Aidan Quinn). Distraught, and over the objections of Gillian (Kidman), Sally vows never again to practice magic, casting a spell that will make her young daughters forget everything about the family legacy, both the gifts for spell-casting and the curse on romance.

It’s unclear how far into the future we jump ahead, but Sally’s tween daughters are now of grad-school age: the Sally-ish Antonia (Maisie Williams) is a medical intern, while the more free-spirited, Gillian-ish Kylie (Joey King) studies art. Ignorant of the Owens curse, Kylie allows herself to fall in love with Gideon (Xolo Maridueña, Blue Beetle), and when tragedy strikes, the young woman is furious with Sally for keeping such big secrets. When a mysterious book sends Kylie to England with the promise of being able to break the Owens curse, it’s up to Sally and Gillian to save the day and teach the next generation about their magical powers.

Lest anyone think the elder Owens have given up on love, the movie gives Sally a Mr. Right — specifically, Professor Ian Wright (Lee Pace), an expert on witchcraft who might or might not help save Kylie from the forces of dark, “left-handed” magic. One of few successful ideas in Practical Magic 2 occurs whenever our heroines enter a space where dark magic has been performed, with cinematographer Simon Duggan (Furiosa) subtly manipulating lenses to flatten and distort the space.

Based on another of Alice Hoffman’s novels about the Owenses, Practical Magic 2 boasts three screenwriters, never a promising sign, particularly when one of those screenwriters is Akiva Goldsman (the man behind Batman and Robin, Winter’s Tale, and The Dark Tower, to name just a few). The finished product shares many of the original film’s flaws, from careening shifts in tone to not enough screen time for Stockard Channing and Dianne Weist as Sally and Gillian’s wise, eccentric aunts. Sally turning her back on magic also means the sequel turns its back on the community of women built in the first film; Sally’s botanicals store is never mentioned, so that she can instead work as a librarian in a very It’s a Wonderful Life turn of events. On top of that, the film struggles to accomplish its sequel duties of revisiting beloved moments from the previous movie, wedging two big shout-outs into the film’s finale even though they don’t fit the moment at all.

The success of films like Freakier Friday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice no doubt means there are more ’90s-nostalgia sequels in the pipeline. Those films would do well to avoid the pitfalls of this miscast spell.

Director: Susanne Bier
Screenwriters: Akiva Goldsman and Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel; based on “The Book of Magic” by Alice Hoffman
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Weist, Stockard Channing, Joey King, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod
Executive producers: Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Donald Sabourin, Alice Hoffman, Kelly Marcel
Producers: Denise Di Novi, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman
Director of photography: Simon Duggan
Production design: Tom Burton
Editing: Sam Williams
Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams
Sound design: Ben Barker, supervising sound editor; Glenn Freemantle, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Warner Bros., Alcon Entertainment, Domain Entertainment, Di Novi Pictures, Fortis Films, Blossom Films
In English
130 minutes