Nostalgia. Don’t studios love it? Comfort food for audiences pre-chewed and easily digestible. So much less pressure to create a sequel to a not unloved, but also not particularly adored, nearly thirty-year-old movie than to have to fiddle about creating a new story. In 1998 Practical Magic directed by Griffin Dunne was released to tepid critical response. It had the advantage of starring two leading actresses, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, who could individually mostly draw a crowd but together managed to draw an audience big enough that the film didn’t financially flop. However, over the years Practical Magic did well in both the home rental market and being a commercial channel staple. Practical Magic 2 was announced banking on the first film’s familiarity. Checking in on the magic Owens sisters might produce, if not a huge hit, a decent built-in audience who were able to overlook the flaws of the first.
Familiarity is entirely the key to Practical Magic 2. After revealing that Sally Owens’ (Sandra Bullock) ideal man, Investigator Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) was not able to survive the Owens family curse and died after marrying Sally: the film explains that Sally made her sister Gillian (Nicole Kidman) and their aunts Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Frances (Stockard Channing) to never let Sally’s two daughters know about their magical heritage, skills, and cursed love life.
Antonia (Maisie Williams) now a trainee doctor, and Kylie (Joey King) an advanced arts student, get on with their ordinary non-magical lives while Sally has cut herself off from magic and community still residing on a bucolic Massachusetts island. Gillian has been off on various adventures and has continued to refine her witch skills. Everyone arrives back at the gorgeous Colonial Revival home for Aunt Jet’s birthday party.
Yet, something has been set in motion to change the lives of the Owens women forever. Jet finds a book, The Raven Book, a book of shadows from the left-hand (sinister dark magic) that potentially explains how the love curse cast by the heartbroken witch Marie Owens can be broken.
Sally’s “normal life” repressing her magic hasn’t taken her anywhere, but she has maintained a loving relationship with Gillian and a close relationship with her now adult daughters. A shockwave runs through Sally and Gillian’s life when Jet dies (aware of her impending demise by the death beetle) that gets even worse when Sally is made aware that Kylie has a serious boyfriend, Gideon (Xolo Maridueña). After ignoring Gillian’s advice not to fall in love, Kylie pledges herself to Gideon and the inevitable Owens family curse raises its head as he ends up in a coma.
Kylie and Antonia find out about their history, mostly from a frustrated Gillian who is tired of Sally hiding who they are. Kylie quite fairly declares her mother a liar who put Gideon in danger and grabs the Raven Book which guides her to England to discover her heritage and perhaps break the curse.
Practical Magic 2 doesn’t try to break new ground, perhaps excepting the inclusion of Professor Ian Wright (Lee Pace) as an impossibly handsome and charming occult specialist and magic practitioner. Moving most of the action to England and pretty villages there isn’t a particularly remarkable change of location but does allow for Sally and Gillian to bicker quite a bit about suitcases. It also leaves Antonia and Frances on Gideon duty at home which relegates Maisie Williams to almost background noise as the action (what there is of it) takes place on another continent.
Significantly longer than the original but with less to fill it, Susanne Bier’s movie doesn’t attempt to be exciting or groundbreaking but instead focuses on the same dynamics that were in the first film. Sally’s need for control, Gillian’s more chaotic personality, the importance of sisterhood, and how priorities change but family remains sacred. And, of course, how the patriarchy made the women outliers to begin with.
An entirely underwhelming villain who is once again, like Goran Višnjić’s Jimmy Angelov, prattling on about what he is owed and owns makes the movie a vaguely feminist excursion. Alas, there’s no coming together of a group of women to exorcise a nasty ghost. The movie doesn’t have any interest in extraneous characters and sometimes it lacks interest in the main characters. Joey King’s Kylie gets to be active and self-assertive but her naïveté about the world of witchcraft makes her mainly someone who needs to be rescued by the person who hurt her the most.
Practical Magic has always favoured Sally as the protagonist with Gillian and others as less responsible people she must wrangle. Practical Magic 2 does at the least address the tendency she has to want things done her way, despite her way having hurtful consequences because she’s afraid of being exposed to more heartbreak.
There are occasional laughs, mostly provided by Kidman. There’s occasional charm too, almost entirely provided by Pace. What Practical Magic 2 doesn’t provide is a justification for its existence. A justification that gets even less convincing as one tries to figure out (at least narratively) why Sally’s daughters aren’t in their thirties. No film really should be held accountable for its existence, but it feels fair to ask the question why Practical Magic 2 after so long and why haven’t the costumes changed? Chokers and slip dresses again? Miranda Priestly from another underwhelming sequel would definitely weigh in.
Practical Magic 2 is the kind of movie that one watches silently begging to do something. Be braver and bolder, be better, be mildly enchanting. Be more than nostalgia with diminishing returns. It doesn’t manage to fulfil any of those criteria. It’s akin to rewarmed fries — soggy and as disappointing as you suspected they’d be, but you thought this might just be the time when they’d hit the spot.
Director: Susanne Bier
Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett. Based on the novels by Alice Hoffman
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Lee Pace, Joey King, Maisie Williams, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing
Cinematographer: Simon Duggan
Editing: Sam Williams