I realized something troubling when I sat down earlier this week to rewatch Griffin Dunne’s 1998 eventual classic Practical Magic, based on the Alice Hoffman book series. I had never actually seen Practical Magic the entire way through. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it on basic cable over the years on channels running various Halloween movie marathons, and I think because of that I was under the assumption I loved this movie everyone else loved. After actually sitting down for the entire movie, I realized there’s a lot here to love, but overall this movie is kind of a mess. The script doesn’t go as deeply into the two lead characters as I would have liked, also the tone is all over the place and shifts jarringly between fun, witchy banter to genuine terror and life and death stakes. 

28 years later, there doesn’t seem to be a lot that’s really changed. Since we are in the era of the legacy sequel (or ‘legacyquel’) it seems inevitable that every movie people loved on cable that cost less than $100 million to make, will be revisited. Like I said in my The Devil Wears Prada 2 review earlier this year, the legacy sequel is often a beleaguered and thankless endeavor, we’ve learned this to be indisputably true with every film with the world Jurassic in the title over the last decade. If a legacy sequel is leaning heavily into fan service and playing the greatest hits of the original, the whole experience can feel cheap and unsatisfying. And yet, I guess sometimes if we lean into that hard enough, maybe it can work. 

After an indeterminate amount of time since the 1998 film has passed, we find sisters Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman), two Massachusetts witches who thought they’d defeated the curse that has haunted the women of their family for generations, that any man who loves an Owens woman dies a terrible death. Sally’s husband died years ago, prompting her to erase her daughter Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams)’s memories of any magic. Once Kylie’s handsome and charming boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) is involved in an accident leaving him in a coma, Kylie is determined to get to the bottom of this familial curse and break it once and for all, sending her on a globe-trotting adventure to London. And her mother and aunt aren’t far behind.

I found it funny and kind of charming that Practical Magic 2 shares a lot of the same problems of the first movie, and yet I still had a pretty good time with it anyway. Tonally, it’s all over the place – in the first 15 minutes we have a scene recreating the fun ‘midnight margaritas’ bit from the first movie, immediately followed by a scene involving a heartbreaking Fleetwood Mac Landslide needle drop. And a lot of that keeps happening throughout the runtime, which is about 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. And for basically the whole film, you’re never sure which side of the tonal extreme you’re going to get. And yet, the sheer joy of seeing Kidman and Bullock together once again so strongly in their element overrides a lot of the problems I had with this film. 

Bullock and Kidman step back into these roles like no time has passed, but it’s always clear how much it has. Bullock and Kidman are both Oscar winners now. They weren’t in 1998. In the ‘90s they were more like ingenues, not the icons of cinema we know them to be today. Neither of them has aged very much over the past almost three decades, but Nicole Kidman’s in the AMC ad that literally plays before every movie you see there. And both actresses have become more selective about the projects they take on, so I was surprised they’d want to come back to this. 

Like in the first film, Bullock has more to do, and Kidman is kind of the sidekick, which is a problem. We don’t have much of an idea what’s going on in Gillian’s life, or what her life has become all of these years later. She tries desperately to be the life of the party (with an almost college RA kind of energy – it’s jarring to hear Kidman telling someone to ‘lock in’ at one point) but not a lot is said about the experiences she’s had over the past few decades, or what her life is like now. Bullock’s Sally seems to live a pretty boring and mundane life, which is obviously the point, having suppressed all of her magical abilities. But both of these women have dealt with sacrifice, grief, regret and difficult life choices in the elapsed time since the first film, and I would have once again, liked to have learned more about who these women really are.

Another thing that annoyed me about the first film is evident here too – Dianne Weist and Stockard Channing, returning as Sally and Gillian’s wise but chaotic aunts Jet and Frances, are given almost nothing to do. Both actresses have maybe 10-15 minutes of screentime each, and the script does them no favors, and gives them no opportunity to really do anything with the time they’re given. Joey King plays Sally’s daughter Kylie, who gets much more to do than Maisie Williams, who is basically walking around a hospital in scrubs with a concerned expression on her face the entire time. It’s also unclear how much time has passed since the first movie. In that film, Evan Rachel Wood played Kylie, who could easily have come back for this one, but both daughters appear to be in their mid-to-late 20s, which would mean it’s been closer to 15 years than 30. But exactly when we are in the story is never addressed, along with about a hundred other questions the film never cares to answer. 

Other new cast members include Blue Beetle’s Xolo Maridueña as Kylie’s too-good-to-be-true boyfriend Gideon, who we spend about five minutes with before the inciting incident that leads Kylie to go break the curse, after which he’s lying in a hospital bed for most of the movie. We also have the incredible Lee Pace as Ian, a professor who helps out Sally and Gillian, and might become a love interest for Sally. He’s got a sharp, magnetic presence, he always has, and here he’s the romantic lead, which I think is a great use of Lee Pace. Solly McLeod also pops up as Tom, a young man in the UK who offers to help Kylie, who might not be all he seems. I felt the writing with his character to be kind of ridiculous, but he serves the purpose he needs to at that point in the story.

The very distinct cozy/spooky vibes of the first Practical Magic are obviously what’s attracted fans to this movie so much over the years, and what’s brought them back to it every ‘spooky season’. And I feel like the vibe is maintained throughout in this sequel. Susanne Bier directs, and she is certainly not known for material that’s light and fun, and as a result the film seems to be leaning into the heavier life-and-death stakes, which makes the film feel uneven. This time we have three screenwriters, Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, and it definitely feels like a script written by three people who could not agree on what this movie was supposed to be. And yet, I almost want to forgive that because tonal inconsistencies are also a big part of the first movie, and might be more of a feature than a bug, depending on the viewer.

Australian cinematographer Simon Duggan shot this, and the film is seemingly always either over or under lit, but there is a cool thing involving framing in scenes in rooms where magic has taken place. Alexandra Byrne is the costume designer here, and Joey King and Maisie Williams, specifically, are given absolutely hideous ensembles throughout. I don’t remember much about the film’s score, but I do remember all the needle drops, specifically the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac song, which feels like emotional manipulation, but sometimes that can work. There’s also Olivia Rodrigo’s very recent top 40 hit The Cure, used in a pivotal moment in the third act, but this works a lot better than it should. And there’s several other musical cues from the first movie that feel like bursts of hollow fan service. 

Overall, anything negative anyone can say about either Practical Magic movie is probably true, and yet I still had a pretty good time with both of them. The chemistry between Bullock and Kidman is just as strong now as it was in the ‘90s, and if you’re coming to this movie simply to see these two iconic actresses play off each other again, you’ll get what you came for. And if you watch Practical Magic 1 every Halloween, and don’t seem to be bothered by the tonal problems, the weird script and the characterization inconsistencies, I doubt anything this sequel is doing will bother you either. Practical Magic 2 may be a bit of a mess but, just like the first one, it’s a warm, inviting and endearing mess. And while it’s not improving on the original, I think most fans of that film will appreciate another journey with the characters they love.