Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as witchy sisters Sally and Gillian Owens in this sequel to the 1998 cult classic Practical Magic.
I had never seen the original prior to this new release, but made sure to catch myself up ahead of time so as to be properly in on the magic, or as much as a newcomer could hope to be.
While I wasn’t a big fan, I could appreciate the bond between the two sisters and their family (or coven) as a whole – their eccentric aunts and Sally’s starry-eyed young daughters. That, alongside the autumnal aesthetic and that seaside house I’d heard so much about, seemed like enough of a foundation for a sequel to go off of, especially one that leaned into the idea of the six of them as a magical little family unit.
‘No magic is stronger than sisterhood. Cast by fate, tested by time and never broken.’
As with a lot of these legacy sequels, though, of which this is only the latest in a long line, there’s an inherent undermining of the original at play here in the very DNA of the thing alone. While both of these films are based on a book series, the original ended on a pretty final note, especially given the ongoing themes of finding love and growing closer to your family.
This film picks up twenty-eight years later (in a move that will surely have Danny Boyle’s lawyers getting in touch) to find Sally widowed once again, now two for two when it comes to ill-fated husbands. It turns out that despite the niceties of the original’s ending, her love affair with the Aidan Quinn’s character lasted just a few short years.
In a flashback, we see Sally make a solemn vow to rid all memory of magic from the minds of her young daughters Kylie and Antonia as a result of her husband’s death. It’s a serious move on her part – seemingly the only way to circumvent the infamous Owens curse that spells death for any love interest in the picture – and one that she has Gilly swear to uphold.
In the present day, Sally has thrown in the towel and swapped out a promising career in the body soap industry to become the town’s librarian. Gilly remains as wild and free a spirit as ever, pretty much exempt from the effects of the curse as she keeps her lovers as a safe distance. Both of Sally’s daughters are in their early twenties, which doesn’t quite match up with the timeline of the original, but serves the narrative well. Antonia, played by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams is training to be a doctor and is said to be the spitting image of Sally (I’ll keep my opinions to myself) but it’s Joey King’s Kylie who gets the lion’s share of screen-time.
Kylie’s new beau, Gideon, is the perfect match. He’s kind, he’s generous…he’s in a coma after an unlucky incident with a car. Looking to fix that last issue, Kylie grabs a dusty old tome – The Book of Raven – and soon goes AWOL on a quest to rediscover her magic in the hopes of saving her man. Gilly accompanies a panicked Sally in hot pursuit of her daughter, while poor Antonia spends the vast majority of the movie relegated to babysitting duties, watching over Gideon at the hospital.
For a film that’s so focused on ideas of family, and specifically sisterhood, it’s hard to overlook the decision to leave as capable an actress as Williams on the bench. The move does leave more time for the two leads to spar off with one another, which was always going to be the main selling point of a Practical Magic sequel, but for a film with as bloated a runtime as this one – 130 minutes, a whole half-hour longer than its predecessor – it feels like a shame to leave one daughter so underdeveloped.
Despite what you’d expect, the film doesn’t use that extra time to explore how Sally and Gilly’s bond has or hasn’t changed over last thirty-odd years. The 1998 film was interesting because it sold its tickets on the witchy premise but was ultimately a very personal (and oddly raw) story about the two women and the struggles of dealing with men who really weren’t up to snuff. The two would bicker, but were ultimately on the same team through and through. The same is true here, but the writers have throughly mismeasured how much of that irritation to add to the film’s bubbling cauldron.
Sally remains the straight-faced and funnier witch of the pair. While I feel like I rarely see Sandra Bullock on the big screen these days, she does manage to make me laugh with her delivery and her underplayed reactions to everything going on. Kidman, on the other hand, has the raw deal of trying to lend any sense of realism to Gilly when this time around, she’s written as an almost parodical and paper-thin version of the character. She’s awfully one-note here in a way that wasn’t the case in the original, where some semblance of tenderness and vulnerability was able to shine through. The film would have you believe that these two go through an arc in this story, but when things move towards a feel-good finish, you’ll be left wondering where that character development took place.
While there are more spells thrown around here, what magic there was has faded dramatically, so that when the third act unveils a new villain and things descend into a Harry Potter style duel, the whole thing just feels very detached. As the final half-hour played out, I could almost envision what it was that the filmmakers set out to do – there’s some potential to the story – but it’s really a case of too little; too late. The values of the original remain and I’m sure to longtime fans, there will be charm in just spending time with these characters again, but as a new addition, its overlong runtime and dull plotting had me feeling quite bored and in desperate need of a midnight margarita by the end. Now, where do I put this lime again?
BBFC: Rated 12A for threat, violence, injury detail, sex, language, sexual violence references.
Practical Magic 2 is in cinemas now.
