I remember back in 2020, my wife told me one of her favorite movies of all time was Practical Magic, a 1998 film I’d never even heard of. So we ended up watching it together on HBO Max toward the end of that year. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t exactly a personal favorite, probably didn’t even crack my favorites of the month. This past Saturday night, we went to see Practical Magic 2, which had come out that Thursday. I was genuinely surprised by the turnout at the theater. It was basically Avengers: Doomsday, but for white women older than Gen Z.
It’s also wild to realize this sequel arrives 28 years after the original. Yet somehow Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman look almost exactly the same as they did back then. Sure, there’s probably some Botox, hair dye, and expertly applied makeup involved, but credit where it’s due, both of them look fantastic. The story picks up on a roughly similar time jump, with Sally Owens now having given birth to two daughters, but having lost a husband or two along the way, since the Owens family curse preventing the women from ever loving again still hasn’t been broken.
Her sister Gillian, meanwhile, has never settled into a serious relationship or had kids of her own, but she remains completely devoted to her sister and is a wonderful aunt to her nieces. Their own aunts are somehow still alive too, and in many ways, it feels like almost no time has passed at all inside the Owens household.
The obvious new addition is Sally’s daughters, Antonia and Kylie. Antonia is a doctor and very much her mother’s daughter, while Kylie, with her red hair and freer spirit, takes clearly after her aunt Gillian. Their mother had cast a spell keeping them unaware they were witches, hoping to give them a normal life. It nearly works, until Kylie starts falling for someone, and naturally, the poor guy seems doomed. Sure enough, he ends up in a coma, and Kylie starts piecing together clues her mother had oddly and ironically been dropping about the family curse all along.
With her aunt Gillian mainly guiding her along, Kylie decides to fully embrace her identity as a witch. She becomes convinced she’s meant to be the one to finally break the curse placed on the women of their bloodline generations ago, a journey that takes her to England. Her time in the UK proves far more dangerous and challenging than expected. Sally and Gillian eventually follow after she sets off alone, since she clearly needs the guidance of more experienced witches.
As for the new characters, I thought they were decent. Kylie and Antonia both show real potential and feel like a natural setup for a Practical Magic 3, and there’s clearly an audience hungry for it. Lee Pace was pretty entertaining as Professor Ian Wright. Given that most of this audience skews Millennial, Gen X, and Baby Boomer, he clearly serves as eye candy for viewers partial to a silver fox, which I find pretty amusing considering Lee Pace isn’t romantically interested in women in real life.
Honestly, I wasn’t blown away by Practical Magic 2. Like a lot of sequels, it’s chasing a high bar and doesn’t quite clear it. My wife, on the other hand, absolutely loved it and left the theater beaming, but I could see some fans walking away at least a little underwhelmed. That said, if you were a fan of the original, especially if you’re a woman, I’d imagine you’ll want to check this one out, even if it’s just streaming it for free down the line. It’s a heavily estrogen-centric film, so it naturally doesn’t resonate with me the way it does with my wife, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. I also found it a little odd seeing Maisie Williams in this, since I’ve always pictured her as Arya Stark, a small British-accented girl, so watching her play a grown-ish American woman was odd to me personally. But if they greenlight Practical Magic 3, I might just tap out and let my wife watch that one with a friend instead.