REVIEW - 'Practical Magic 2' isn't particularly necessary, but neither is it unwelcome

Posted at 02:42h in Reviews by Doug Jamieson 0 Comments Twenty-eight years after Practical Magic first invited audiences into the wonderfully witchy world of the Owens family, it's easy to remember the spells, curses, midnight margaritas, and impossibly gorgeous Victorian house as the ingredients that transformed an initially unsuccessful romantic fantasy into a beloved cult classic. But the real magic was always considerably simpler: it was casting Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters. That remains true of Practical Magic 2 , an enormously welcome reunion trapped inside an often frustratingly unwieldy sequel. Director Susanne Bier recaptures much of the warmth, whimsy, and cosy supernatural charm that made the original so enduring, while Bullock and Kidman slip back into Sally and Gillian Owens as though they've spent the past three decades waiting for someone to yell action. Unfortunately, they're saddled with a messy screenplay, an overstuffed plot, and an utterly unnecessary 130-minute runtime that tests the limits of even their considerable charms. Yet whenever Bullock and Kidman are together, Practical Magic 2 casts exactly the spell fans have been waiting for. Life hasn't been particularly kind to Sally (Bullock) since we last saw her. Her supposedly happy ending with Gary has fallen victim to the centuries-old Owens curse, leaving Sally widowed once again and terrified her daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) will eventually suffer the same heartbreak. Rather than preparing them for their magical inheritance, Sally chooses the nuclear option, burying her own supernatural abilities and magically ensuring her daughters grow up completely unaware they're witches. That decision inevitably comes back to haunt everyone when Kylie confesses her love for boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), only for the Owens curse to promptly put him in a coma. After discovering everything her mother has hidden from her, an understandably furious Kylie finds an ancient magical text offering the possibility of breaking the curse and heads to England in search of answers. Sally and Gillian follow, encountering dark magic, buried family secrets, and Ian Wright (Lee Pace), an occult academic who appears to have been summoned primarily because somebody realised this movie needed an extremely tall, heavily tattooed man to smoulder at Bullock. Fair enough. There's something initially intriguing about returning Sally to the emotional position she spent the first film desperately trying to escape. She once resented the secrecy and complications surrounding her magical heritage, yet decades of grief have transformed her into precisely the kind of protective older Owens woman she once resisted. Having lost two husbands to forces beyond her control, Sally convinces herself that denying her daughters knowledge of their heritage will protect them from experiencing the same pain. It's a recognisable parental mistake built around an interesting generational idea. Sally doesn't want her daughters to inherit her trauma, so she inadvertently leaves them completely unprepared to understand it. The secrecy that once harmed her becomes the same secrecy she inflicts upon Kylie and Antonia, allowing Practical Magic 2 to explore how easily fear can be passed from one generation to another even when parents desperately believe they're breaking the cycle. The screenplay never examines that idea with quite the depth it deserves. Screenwriters Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel have an extraordinary amount of narrative business to juggle, and potentially affecting emotional developments are frequently hurried aside to make room for another magical revelation, romantic complication or piece of exposition. Sally's grief over Gary, her complicated relationship with magic and the rupture between mother and daughter should provide considerable emotional weight, yet the movie rarely allows any of them enough room to breathe. That's particularly baffling because Practical Magic 2 has no shortage of time. At 130 minutes, Bier's film is almost half an hour longer than its predecessor, a frankly criminal length for something this breezy. Nobody walking into a whimsical romantic fantasy about attractive witches, handsome academics, and generational curses is demanding an epic. There's a delightful 100-minute movie hiding somewhere inside Practical Magic 2 , desperately waving for assistance as unnecessary detours, repetitive conversations, and cumbersome exposition pile on top of it. The film begins with such effortless charm that the eventual drag becomes even more frustrating. Before the plot sends everyone scattering in different directions, there's enormous pleasure in simply watching the Owens women exist together. They tease each other, bicker, cast spells, and fall naturally into the familial rhythms that made the original so appealing. The house feels warm, the magic feels playful and the atmosphere practically begs for a blanket, a margarita and several strategically placed candles. Then the story kicks into gear and inexplicably separates the very people we're enjoying watching together. Kylie heads to England. Sally and Gillian chase after her. Antonia remains behind with the comatose Gideon. Aunts Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Franny (Stockard Channing) drift around the edges of the narrative. New characters arrive carrying additional mythology. By the time the film begins untangling its central mystery, the beautifully simple pleasure of watching generations of Owens women bounce off one another has been replaced by a plot working considerably harder than necessary. King handles the responsibility placed upon her with considerable charm, giving Kylie enough determination and emotional vulnerability to make her impulsive journey believable within the heightened logic of this world. There's also something appropriate about Sally's daughter becoming the young Owens woman willing to risk everything for love, forcing her mother to confront the very fears she's spent years suppressing. Williams isn't afforded nearly the same opportunity. Antonia spends far too much of the film stranded away from the central action, which feels like an enormous missed opportunity when the obvious appeal of introducing Sally's adult daughters should have been developing a sisterly relationship capable of echoing, rather than simply imitating, Sally and Gillian. King and Williams have an easy rapport whenever they're together, but the screenplay barely gives them a chance to explore it. That's emblematic of the sequel's strangest contradiction. Practical Magic endured because its romantic fantasy ultimately understood that romantic love was only part of the equation. Its beating heart was sisterhood, not merely between Sally and Gillian but throughout generations of Owens women who supported, irritated, protected and occasionally resurrected one another. The climax transformed that idea into community, with women joining together to save one of their own. Practical Magic 2 still believes deeply in female connection, but its structure keeps pulling those women apart while placing an enormous amount of narrative importance on their relationships with men. Kylie is driven by saving Gideon. Sally is eventually offered another opportunity for romance through Ian. Meanwhile, Antonia, Jet, and Franny are left with considerably less to do than their presence deserves. Thankfully, the film possesses two weapons powerful enough to overcome almost any questionable screenwriting decision. Once again, Bullock and Kidman are glorious together. Nearly three decades have passed, but their chemistry hasn't aged a day. There's an effortless intimacy to the way they interact that makes Sally and Gillian immediately feel like sisters again. They interrupt one another, finish thoughts, exchange looks, and casually irritate each other with the precision of people who have spent a lifetime knowing exactly which buttons to push. Bullock gives Sally a harder edge this time, allowing grief and anxiety to sit beneath her familiar warmth. She's funny because Bullock remains one of cinema's most naturally gifted comedic performers, but there's also a weariness to Sally that makes her determination to protect her daughters understandable even when her decisions are questionable. Kidman is equally delightful returning to Gillian's freer energy without simply recreating the wild child of 1998. There's a maturity beneath her mischief now, and the sequel cleverly reverses their original dynamic. Where Sally once had to rescue Gillian from catastrophe, Gillian now becomes the sister standing beside Sally as her carefully controlled world begins collapsing. Their bond is the film's emotional safety net. Whenever the plot starts disappearing into another convoluted magical detour, Bullock and Kidman need only start bickering, and the movie immediately comes alive again. The script may occasionally forget what audiences came to see, but its stars never do. Pace proves an enjoyable addition as Ian, although the character often functions as an extremely handsome delivery system for supernatural exposition. Pace and Bullock generate enough easy chemistry to make Sally's gradual romantic awakening appealing, particularly whenever Gillian is nearby gleefully observing her sister's obvious attraction. Wiest and Channing are similarly welcome in their smaller appearances as Jet and Franny. Their return inevitably carries an additional emotional charge, and simply seeing the wider Owens family reunited contributes to the sequel's comforting sense of homecoming. Their roles could certainly have been larger, particularly given how fundamental the older generation was to the original's celebration of matriarchal knowledge, but their presence remains lovely. Nostalgia is generally deployed with impressive restraint. Familiar songs and traditions return, including the inevitable resurrection of 'Coconut' and those beloved midnight margaritas, but Practical Magic 2 rarely becomes the kind of legacy sequel that pauses every five minutes to point enthusiastically at something audiences recognise. The callbacks work because the characters have genuine history attached to them rather than because Warner Bros. expects applause for remembering its own movie. That warmth ultimately makes the sequel remarkably easy to forgive. Its plotting is undeniably scattershot. The central mystery takes too long to resolve despite its destination rarely being difficult to anticipate. A late-arriving threat lacks the development necessary to feel genuinely consequential, while several potentially fascinating characters and relationships remain frustratingly underserved. The final stretch keeps going long after the movie appears ready to wrap things up, adding an elongated epilogue to a film that desperately needed someone in the editing room willing to start cutting. Yet Practical Magic 2 isn't the kind of movie that lives or dies on airtight plotting. Neither was its predecessor, to be fair. The original became a cult favourite because audiences wanted to spend time with these women, inhabit their gorgeous world, and believe for a couple of hours that sisterhood, community, and a little supernatural intervention might be powerful enough to overcome whatever darkness arrived at the door. The sequel understands enough of that appeal to survive its shortcomings. There's something genuinely touching about seeing Sally and Gillian older, changed by loss but still fundamentally themselves. They've experienced marriages, heartbreak, death, and decades of life beyond what audiences witnessed in 1998, yet put them together with a bottle of tequila and an impending supernatural catastrophe, and the intervening years disappear. Perhaps that's ultimately enough justification for returning. Practical Magic 2 may struggle to conjure a story worthy of its absurd two-hour-plus runtime, but Bullock and Kidman remain so utterly enchanting together that their effortless sisterly chemistry casts a spell strong enough to survive the sequel's messy plotting. Fans who have spent nearly three decades longing to return to the Owens family will probably be considerably more willing to overlook its flaws than newcomers wondering what all the fuss is about. This isn't a sequel that improves upon the original or finds a particularly compelling reason why its story needed continuing, but it does understand the emotional reason audiences wanted one anyway. Sometimes you don't need a new spell. You just want another midnight margarita with old friends. Distributor: Warner Bros. Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest Director: Susanne Bier Producers: Denise Di Novi, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, Kelly Marcel Cinematography: Simon Duggan Production Design: Tom Burton Costume Design: Alexandra Byrne Editor: Sam Williams Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams Running Time: 130 minutes Release Date: 10th September 2026 (Australia