Practical Magic 2 Review

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1:01Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman try to enchant us once again. This is your IGN review of Practical Magic 2 by Tara Bennett. In 1998, director Griffin done along with Bullock and Kidman, delivered the equivalent of a warm, automnal, wick and hug of a movie with Practical Magic. A modest hit at the box office. This power grew over the years as a cult favorite because of the luminous charm of the two leads as love-loan, cursed witch-sister Sally and Jillian Owens. 28 years later, it's actually a little bit of Hollywood magic that Practical Magic 2 even got made with the returning cast of Bullock, Kidman, Stockard Channing and Diane Weast as the matriarchs of the Owens family, all still residing together in their family home in Massachusetts. As beguiling as it is to see the return of these actresses, their alchemy is impeded by a hyperactive screenplay that's too busy bouncing them through plot beats and muddled stakes instead of giving them and the new cast better stories.

2:06Practical Magic 2 adapts from author Alice Hoffman's novel series about the Owens clan of witches. This time primarily drawing from 2021's The Book of Magic. It's about 20 years since the end of the first film, which had the Owens witches outing themselves on Halloween to their little town, publicly embracing their wicking legacy. Today, Bullock's Sally is the town librarian and dedicated single mother to grown daughters, Kylie played by Joey King and Nuro Surgeon in training Antonia played by Maisie Williams. Because of the still-entaxed 300-year-old Owens curse that brings death to any man to whom they confess their love, Sally has kept her girls in the dark about their magical abilities. She's made her still free-spirited yet vaguely employed sister Jillie played by Kidman, promised not to tell them, along with the reluctant buy-in of their aunts, jet played by weast and franny played by Channing. Kidman does her impish best to play Jillian as the devil on Sally's shoulder, trying

3:06to break those tall emotional walls while pushing her towards the very handsome and multi-tattoo doctor right, played by Lee Pays. But outside of playing her frustrated sister's keeper, the script shorts the actress any parallel needy story, like she had with the murder of Jillie's truly frightening ex-boyfriend Jimmy in the first film. When Bullock and Kidman get some rare quiet moments to just let the sisters talk, they make the most of it every time. But those moments are few and far between the more the chase for Kylie picks up and gets burdened with an overly convoluted exposition dump about the ancient history of the area where Maria was burned to death and who was what has been summoning Kylie. As for Pays, I'll never understand how an actor as charming and compelling as he is gets handed such underwhelming material. If you can't write a character for the man that is clearly swoon-worthy from the get-go, you're doing something incredibly wrong. In fact, it's a little insulting that Wright is introduced in a stunt set piece that frames

4:08him purely as eye candy, with little clarity of purpose aside from playing a potential love interest. And even then, the script gives Bullock and Pays scenes with so much tonal whiplash, it's never clear if they're actually flirting or just being passive aggressive with one another. The heat and charm found between Sally and Aiden Quinn's detective Gary Howden in the first film is sorely missing between Sally and Wright. No matter how hard the actors try, and that's a big problem in getting the audience to buy the power of love. Though Practical Magic 2 is an terrible second chapter, one is left at the end with the feeling that a much better sequel with more deeply considered and well-crafted versions of the Owens women might be floating somewhere out there in the winds above Massachusetts. The Practical Magic 2 cast are hexed by a script that focuses far too much on convoluted plotting, instead of giving the legacy characters interesting growth and scenes where we get to know who these women are today and how they've grown beyond their tropes 20 years later.

5:12Practical Magic 2's IGN score? Six out of ten. Thanks for listening to IGN. My name is Tony Jackson, and for the latest updates on Practical Magic 2, visit us at IGN.com.