{"id":594178,"date":"2026-09-08T18:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594178\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T18:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:50:19","slug":"practical-magic-2-review-bullock-and-kidman-return-for-odd-sequel-that-still-casts-a-spell-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594178\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical Magic 2 review \u2013 Bullock and Kidman return for odd sequel that still casts a spell | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much has changed in the universe, cosmic and otherwise, since the Owens witches last graced the big screen with their practical magic of sleeping draughts, midnight margaritas and generational love curses. For one, movies like the 1998 cult-ish classic Practical Magic<\/a> \u2013 a compellingly bizarre mashup of genres, aspirational 90s fashion and sisterly affection starring Sandra Bullock<\/a> and Nicole Kidman<\/a> in their movie-star primes as lovelorn sorceresses in Puritan-lite Massachusetts \u2013 largely stopped reaching theaters. For another, nostalgia cycles only intensified and tightened, our algorithms clogged with unsolicited sequels<\/a> and dupes for Bullock\u2019s impeccable vintage 90s Levi\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Which makes Practical Magic 2, reuniting both Kidman and Bullock, and Stockard Channing<\/a> and Dianne Wiest<\/a> as their lovingly eccentric aunts, somewhat of an anomaly, at once a seeming inevitability and, as a matrilineal romance comedy (though decidedly not a romcom) starring two 60-year-old women<\/a>, an<\/a> oddity<\/a>. There\u2019s no circumventing nostalgia bait, but Practical Magic<\/a> remains so idiosyncratic in tone and, well, kookiness, that a sequel somewhat appeals.<\/p>\n

The new film, directed by Susanne Bier from a script by original co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman alongside Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel (and again based on a book by Alice Hoffman<\/a>), doubles down on the distillable ingredients of the original \u2013 hairpin tonal turns; strange CGI flourishes; needle drops by Stevie Nicks, that patron saint of witchy white women \u2013 though perhaps to a fault. Once again, Bullock\u2019s Sally, the older and more neurotic\/sensible of the central sisters, has given up practicing magic, much to the chagrin of Kidman\u2019s looser, airier Gilly. Though she ended the first film believing that she broke the centuries-long curse that every man an Owens woman loved was doomed to die, life offered no such happy endings; her second husband, played in the original by Aidan Quinn, lasted only a few years, prompting her to supernaturally erase any memories of magic from her daughters\u2019 minds, lest they too knowingly love a man to death.<\/p>\n

This requires a little magical fudging of the timeline: though the original took place in March 1998\u2013 so says Quinn\u2019s investigator Gary Hallet when interviewing Sally for the suspected murder of Gilly\u2019s serial killer ex (it\u2019s kooky!) \u2013 new headstones place the events in early 2000s. That\u2019s all the better for Kidman and Bullock, both older now than Channing and Wiest were in the original but with fewer laugh lines, to hover somewhere in the uncanny valley of Hollywood middle age and keep Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams<\/a>), who should be in their mid-30s, in the young 20s heyday of first real love. (Sorry to the recast<\/a> Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip.)<\/p>\n

This will prove irksome if you, like me, are timeline-sensitive, but the original\u2019s playful sense of tone, logic and rules in general was admittedly central to its appeal. I find it endearing that the magic in the Practical Magic franchise allows for generational curses, purgatorial spirits and the automatic stirring of coffee cups but not, say, levitating suitcases upstairs, forcing poor Kidman to lug oversized bags through three separate scenes.<\/p>\n

So it goes \u2013 though Gilly obliquely warns Kylie that \u201clove is our undoing\u201d with \u201cheartbreak feels good in a place like this<\/a>\u201d camp sincerity (complimentary), Kylie goes on loving anyway. And when her doting college boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridue\u00f1a) ends up cursed in a coma, she, like her mother before her, tearfully rages against the powers that be and, guided by a recently unearthed Book of the Raven, flees to the Owens\u2019 ancestral homeland of England. Sally and Gilly, whose old-pro sparring could sustain a lesser sequel, chase after her, leaving poor Williams and Channing \u2013 by far the film\u2019s most luminous screen presence \u2013 stranded at the hospital in Boston. A shame, as I would love Aunt Fran\u2019s take on the men they meet abroad, a fascinating dichotomy of masculinity in the hetero-pessimist age: one, an occult professor played by 6ft 5in internet boyfriend Lee Pace, openly pines for Sally, encouraging her to feel her feelings and embrace her power while covered in tattoos; the other, a brooding warlock with a mask of affability (Solly McLeod), craves Kylie\u2019s power, seething with a resonant, almost too pointed sense of aggrieved entitlement.<\/p>\n

The plot beats, guiding all the women through said men back to both magic and each other, are characteristically odd and mostly beside the point; if you\u2019re watching the Practical Magic sequel, it is probably to see Kidman and Bullock channel their unique movie-star sorcery \u2013 beguiling eccentricity and earthy exasperation, both singularly endearing in their primes \u2013 and they conjure it with muscle memory that is fascinating in its own right.<\/p>\n

Still, there is some comfort in the Owens\u2019 narrative circularity; in the occult realm, as in the real one, we never truly escape our inheritances nor ourselves, even as times (and men, and hair) change. The overarching, if occasionally overwritten (\u201cno magic is stronger than sisterhood\u201d), theme of feminine solidarity through cyclical adversity is winning enough. The midnight margarita redux may feel obligatory, but there\u2019s just enough magic here to still, despite everything, cast a peculiar spell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much has changed in the universe, cosmic and otherwise, since the Owens witches last graced the big screen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-594178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}