Practical Magic 2 Review: There's Little Magic Left in This Spell Book, And It's a Shame
Despite the return of almost the entire original cast this one dull, overlong endurance test
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Like any good millennial movie, Practical Magic tends to be on at least one channel near daily (alongside The Devil Wears Prada and the Father of the Bride movies). A movie that repeatedly opens up its world to viewers regularly is one that any sequel has a high bar to cross, more so when there's nearly thirty years separating the original from its return. This year's Devil Wears Prada 2 certainly felt like a way to easily snag millennial dollars, and while it doesn't earn waiting so long to return, it at least attempted to tell a continuing story.
Practical Magic 2 doesn't appear to understand what made the original movie so appealing, short of its plot which has the characters recount in "do you remember when..." moments ad nauseum. Gone is the whimsical Alan Silvestri score, the pure romance, even the kookiness, all of which made it the '90s Halloween film it's become. In its place is an overlong, tepid retconning of the first film that's grim and lacks little in the humor and romance department.
Maria's curse, which doomed every man who dared love an Owens woman to a tragic death (and was supposedly broken at the end of the original), has proven to be back with a vengeance. And when it comes to take the life of Sally's (Sandra Bullock's) daughter Kylie's (Joey King) new boyfriend it takes the young girl on a trip to England to find a way to save him. Sally and her sister Gillian (Nicole Kidman) are hot on her trail, forced to band together with a shadowy professor of dark magic (Lee Pace), who might have it bad for Sally.
Practical Magic 2 presumes you haven't seen the first once, let alone a number of times. Immediate changes around the storyline of Maria Owens are crafted to essentially say the first film's end, which broke the curse, was actually a big "just kidding!" This logic also gives a convenient reason to explain the absence of Aiden Quinn as Texas Ranger Gary Hallett, Sally's eventual love at the conclusion of the original, who is essentially fridged in the opening moments of the movie.
There are several moments in the script where the goal is to make a plot point at the expense of the intelligence, or what we already know about, the original characters. Sally, fueled by grief (again), makes the decision (again) that her children will never do magic (again). Albeit here she literally casts a spell to make them forget everything. "If her daughters forgot what they were, they'd have a normal life." I guess it helps that the flashback in this movie makes the kids look far younger than they were in the original.
Time works in weird ways, with a flash forward that brings us to Kylie in college and her younger sister, Antonia (Maisie Williams) on her way to being a neurosurgeon. They blithely go about their lives with zero questions about their past, at least none the script asks. King is certainly effervescent and sweet, but there's nothing holding Kylie together as a person. She holds little of Sally's seriousness nor Gillian's wild ways and is just a blank canvas to motivate the plot forward. This isn't a ding on King at all, who continues to make you root for the character, particularly during an emotionally wrought moment when she reveals her boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña, utterly wasted) is in a coma after being hit by a car. King dominates this sequence and it's unfortunate she never gets another moment of such pathos. Poor Maisie Williams, to her credit, is at least is around.
Kristen Lopez
As far as what Sally and Gillian have been doing, certainly nothing from the first movie. Sally's seemingly successful skincare business in the original feature isn't a thing here and she presumably has gone full librarian, swathed in long pants and high-neck collars. While Gillian, the fun loving rebel of the original film....it's never actually said what she's been doing the last thirty years (oh, there are still stray references to her having sex with terrible men so guess that's it). Then again, this movie is already over two hours so that's probably for the best.
Bullock's Sally was initially cautious, but a woman with a strength and tenacity in her. Here, Bullock can barely make it through a sentence without Woody Allen levels of stammering and stuttering. She's the perpetual "no" person in this movie, so much so it's hard to see what Lee Pace's Ian Wright sees in this woman who runs and hides at everything. Kylie's trip to London is in the hopes of breaking the curse (again) and she's left to become a moving beacon Sally and Gillian follow. The arrival of Pace's Ian Wright gives Sally a love interest, but also gives us someone completely new to gravitate towards and is sorely needed. Pace has oodles of charm, is funny, yet has the ability to work with the seriousness his character requires.
The one holding things together is Kidman, who at least seems to understand who Gillian Owens is, even if it's not on the page. She continues to have fun with the character, deftly turning some of the lines into humorous asides. She understands she's being sidelined here yet still has fun with it. She also forces Bullock to come alive in the scenes they're in together, giving us glimpses of what made the Owens sisters's relationship so charming and high stakes. It's also wonderful to see Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest reprise their roles as Francis and Jett Owens, Sally and Gillian's wacky aunts. They each have far too little time in the movie; Channing is left to sit in hospital chairs for the majority of the runtime. It's actually their story, with a heartbreaking and beautiful scene towards the end, that ends up being the best part of Practical Magic 2.
The third act, which takes forever, is still introducing new characters. The arrival of the movie's "real" villain is so uninspired I'm hard-pressed to remember the character's name (it's Tom, according to IMDb). The movie takes a page from Halloweentown 2: Kalabar's Revenge with the reveal and while it could certainly have done something interesting with the gender dynamics, it develops far too late into the story and barely makes a blip. Never mind that the eventual resolution, taking place in a small English town, would have probably left locals who knew this guy for years asking questions. But, hey, gotta get to that midnight margarita callback!
Fans of the first Practical Magic won't feel the same power watching this and it's a shame considering how many from the original film returned. The issue is a wonky script that feels Frankenstein-ed together into an uninspired patchwork of ideas. It feels like a movie that knows it's thirty years too late and just tries to make the best of things when it's not nearly good enough.
Grade: D
Practical Magic 2 is in theaters Friday.
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