There is a version of Practical Magic 2 that runs a punchy 105 minutes and mostly lets Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman drink, bicker, cast questionable spells, and roast each other from opposite bunkers across the kitchen island. That movie absolutely smokes this year’s crop of over-pumpkin-spiced Halloween fare and sends you out into the crisp night air ready to serve up a few tricks of your own.
Unfortunately, that version appears to have been cursed by the same school of dark magic that spent the last 20 years convincing us the first Practical Magic wasn’t practically terrible.
Nearly three decades after Practical Magic became the kind of movie people insist was always good because they watched it 14 times on cable, we get the inevitable legacy sequel. Everybody is back. The house is back. The margaritas are back. Eventually you start wondering whether the real curse is having to confront how little three decades have affected its two apparently ageless leads.
The setup is familiar, now with a new generation tasked with discovering the less glamorous realities of modern witching. Sally Owens (Bullock), still traumatized by the family curse and the loss of Gary, has spent years keeping her daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) away from magic. The parenting strategy of “we’ll simply never tell the kids the enormous family secret” works about as well as you’d expect in a movie whose audience showed up specifically to watch them discover the enormous family secret.
Kylie learns the truth, her boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) lands in supernatural trouble, and the Owens women head to England in search of answers and, presumably, a tax credit.
That is plenty of plot for a fun witch movie. Practical Magic 2 somehow turns it into a 130-minute group project that never feels headed for first prize at the weird science fair.
The good news is Bullock and Kidman still have it. Their chemistry is so effortless that the movie improves every time it stops explaining mythology and simply lets Sally and Gillian occupy the same room. Kidman, especially, understands exactly what kind of movie this should be: a little campy, a little horny, a little haunted, and never more than five minutes from somebody making a bad decision near a fully stocked bar.
Bullock is more restrained, which fits Sally, but she is still funny whenever the script gets out of her way. Lee Pace arrives looking like the casting department asked, “What if witch academia had a regional manager who absolutely destroys a turtleneck?” He brings some badly needed adult-romance energy to a movie that occasionally forgets two people can have chemistry without first consulting an ancient text.
The bigger problem is that we’re never quite sure what connects all these people besides genealogy and a magical paycheck. The movie is somehow overstuffed and underwritten at the same time. There are curses, family secrets, a little mystery, a magic book, new romances, generational trauma, and enough exposition to qualify for continuing-education credit. Yet after a quarter century to perfect the recipe, the whole thing still feels like amateur-hour witching.
Maisie Williams gets particularly hosed. You can cast Arya Stark in a witch movie and give her the narrative workload of a concerned cousin at Thanksgiving, but the audience is still going to spend two hours waiting for her to flip on the margarita machine and go full Carrie. She never does.
Susanne Bier at least makes the movie look polished, and there are stretches where the old Practical Magic vibe flickers back to life. The music helps. The house helps. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest help simply by appearing, which is fortunate because that is about all they’re asked to do.
And yes, the midnight margaritas return, because Warner Bros. understands branding even when the screenplay forgets storytelling. Maybe it doesn’t matter. If audiences turn the whole thing into a two-hour drinking game, the structural problems should resolve themselves by the third round.
The original worked because it was messy in a charming way. It bounced between romance, comedy, domestic drama, and supernatural nonsense like somebody dumped four movies into a blender after two margaritas. The sequel is more professionally assembled and somehow less alive—not entirely unlike the adult lives of the people who grew up loving the original.
It recreates the ingredients without recreating the feeling. What remains is mostly the hangover. Watching it feels like returning to your alma mater for homecoming 20 years later: you know you can’t recreate the glory days, you probably shouldn’t even try, and yet after two drinks you’re still convinced one more stop might do it.
That is what makes Practical Magic 2 frustrating. It isn’t a disaster. A disaster would at least be interesting. This is more like a perfectly pleasant reunion dinner where everyone looks great, the drinks are strong, and somebody tells one hilarious story from 1998. Then another hour passes and everyone is comparing blood-pressure medication and HOA amenities, and you remember you have all of this at home.
Fans will get enough Bullock and Kidman to justify the trip. Everyone else—particularly anyone paying for a babysitter—can wait for streaming, make a margarita at home, and enjoy the remaining pumpkin spice of middle age without surge pricing.
Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes you just own the IP.
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