Practical Magic 2 Review: Susanne Bier’s Sequel To The 90’s Classic Lacks The Magic Touch
Images courtesy of Warner Bros.
28 years after the release of the cult classic original, Practical Magic 2 returns to give the audience the magical hijinks they’ve been waiting for – without any meaningful substance.
All grown up since the 90’s film, witches Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) are living a relatively normal, magic free life, trying to keep Sally’s daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) out of harm’s way. When Kylie’s boyfriend is put in a coma due to a family curse, she takes a magic book and disappears in an attempt to undo the curse, leaving Sally and Gillian to team up once again to find her.
The plot is surprisingly engaging, with unique character dynamics and interesting developments keeping the audience involved, but while Practical Magic 2 manages to bat above the standard for weird 90’s legacy sequels (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Scream 5), its slow pacing and inconsistent tone of writing leave the viewer underwhelmed. The dialogue varies wildly throughout the film, ranging from genuinely funny scenes to stilted, unnatural (and often cringe inducing) lines, feeling like there was little cohesion within the writers room.
To the film’s credit, it actively avoids being overly reverent to the source material, steering clear of self-referential plot points, and spending minimal time recapping the original film. To the film’s detriment, it is a whole 30 minutes longer than the original, padding out its runtime with boring subplots that feel irrelevant and scenes that either run on too long or feel aimless. The film’s ending is a perfect example of this; the narrative climax happens, and then there’s a charming scene of Bullock recognising the moral of the story, signalling the film’s end. What instead occurs is an unnecessary epilogue with ten minutes of shoehorned homages to the original film and empty narration, leaving the film feeling strung out and mitigating any emotional impact that might have been left throughout its runtime.
When comparing the visuals to that of the original, Practical Magic 2 looks bland and lifeless. Washed out colour palettes, shallow depth of field, constant centre framing and weird looking lighting means that the movie lacks the ‘magic’ that the original's vibrant colours and rich mise en scéne gave it. The film’s approach is also symptomatic of a post-Harry Potter world, with the VFX of magic almost identical to that of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the magic usage here is a lot more overt and flashy than the original, where it’s more used to create a spooky magical atmosphere rather than being explicitly relied on to show the audience.
The central cast are all great, with Kidman and Bullock’s on-screen chemistry being just as strong as it was nearly 30 years ago, and King and Williams bringing life to roles that could have easily been stiff and rigid characters. Despite Williams being the strongest actor out of the newcomers, she is sidelined in a hospital for most of the film, only showing up via phone call whenever the movie deems it relevant to remind the audience that King’s character actually has a sister. This does undermine the film thematically, especially when looking back on the original’s strong emphasis on sisterhood. The narrative suffers from having a lack of stance surrounding this, instead feeling like an afterthought.
1998’s Practical Magic was praised for its focus on female bonds over romantic relationships, however in retrospect it is a disjointed and aimless movie that skips over complicated character dynamics to get to feel-good bromides. Practical Magic 2 could have improved on its predecessor by mitigating these flaws but instead creates a new and underwhelming movie that doesn’t justify its runtime, or really its existence at all.
Practical Magic 2 opens in cinemas September 9th. For tickets and more info, click here.
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