How often do you see groups of women wearing witch hats in a movie theater at 1 p.m. — with Halloween still more than a month away? Since its 1998 release, Practical Magic, the witchy fantasy/dark comedy based on Alice Hoffman’s novel, has gathered a cult following. Nearly 30 years later, those fans returned on opening weekend for Practical Magic 2. Never mind that only about half that time has passed in the fictional world, and eerily youthful stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman now play characters significantly younger than they are. That’s the magic of Hollywood.
The deal
Sisters Sally (Bullock) and Gillian (Kidman) Owens inherited magical powers, an impeccable cottagecore Victorian in coastal Massachusetts and a curse that kills anyone they fall in love with. Sally has lost two husbands to the curse (bye-bye, first film’s love interest Aidan Quinn) and refocused on raising her daughters in ignorance of their witchy heritage. Party girl Gillian, whose poor romantic choices caused trouble when the sisters were younger, never settled down.
But danger looms on the horizon — Sally’s youngest, Kylie (Joey King), has fallen hard for a college classmate. Luckily, the Owens sisters’ lovably odd aunts (Dianne Wiest as Jet and Stockard Channing as Franny) are on the case, albeit not both for long.
Just before her death, Jet discovers an arcane manuscript that might help the family break its curse. Before they can put it to use, an accident lands Kylie’s boyfriend (Xolo Maridueña) in a coma. The youngest Owens lights off to England in search of a magical cure, with Sally and Gillian on her heels.
Will you like it?
In 1998, I was a young film snob who avoided any movie with a gilded title font or a trailer lit like a Thomas Kinkade painting, so I didn’t see Practical Magic until a few weeks ago. And the two generations of Owens sisters won me over — their flowy attire, their intricately production-designed abode, their midnight margaritas, their comic bickering, and the simple opportunity to see mature divas Wiest and Channing ham it up and have a high old time. Does the plot make sense? Not a lot! But it’s clear how Practical Magic found a following.
In adapting Hoffman’s 2021 sequel, The Book of Magic, director Susanne Bier (“The Night Manager”) and writers Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel have ladled on plenty of the cozy, quirky, sisterly ambience that made the first film beloved. Bullock and Kidman still have comedic chemistry; they may not look remotely like sisters, but they act like them. The film’s overall look is more streamer and less spooky than that of Griffin Dunne’s original, but its lengthy coda is pure fan service — margaritas, fairy lights and all.
Before getting there, however, we must wade through a tiresome plot that takes the sisters to England in search of lovesick Kylie, featuring sparkly CGI magic more suited to the Harry Potter franchise. We learn new lore about the Owens ancestor who laid the family curse, but it simply muddies the relatability of the first film’s premise (a witch was dumped, so she swore off men). We never even get to find out if the curse applies only to men or to all romantic partners, surely a relevant consideration in 2026.
It doesn’t help that the new generation of Owens sisters never comes alive the way the earlier ones did, with their own foibles, quibbles and bad romances. King and Maisie Williams (as her older sister, Antonia) aren’t to blame; their characters are simply underwritten, sentimentalized and sidelined, despite Kylie’s centrality to the plot. We never get a sense of what they lost by not growing up with their magical legacy; neither seems to miss it until romance comes into play.
At heart, Practical Magic 2 remains a vehicle for Bullock and Kidman. The scenes in the UK are fun mainly when we get to see the former flirting awkwardly with Lee Pace (as a sassy tattooed warlock) or the latter griping about the low ceiling in a medieval inn. After so many heavy-hitting dramatic roles, it’s refreshing to rediscover the stars’ silly sides.
To counterbalance those screwball aspects, it might have been nice to see more subtlety and maturity when the script gets into serious territory, especially regarding Sally’s new romance (which is absurdly rushed) and the plot’s tear-inducing resolution.
But let’s face it: Subtlety and maturity were never Practical Magic’s strong suit. The original was more freewheeling, vibes-driven Gillian than sensible Sally, and so is the sequel. Revisiting Practical Magic, we can appreciate all the ways in which it prefigured pop-culture trends to come, from the small-town whimsy of “Gilmore Girls” to the rebirth of horror comedy. Practical Magic 2 adds little to that legacy, but there’s still just enough grit under its sap to make even a cynical old critic smile now and then.
If you like this, try…
Practical Magic (1998; HBO Max, TBS, TNT, YouTube Primetime, rentable): The original is weird in ways that only pre-social media films could be, lurching from sisterly sweetness to bloody murder and back within a few scenes.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024; HBO Max, rentable): Tim Burton’s 1988 cozy horror fantasy got a similarly unnecessary “legacy sequel,” partially filmed in Vermont.
The Craft (1996; HBO Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Witches fit the girl-power millennial zeitgeist, making this movie about spell-casting teens another cult hit. See also “Charmed” (Peacock, Pluto TV, Prime Video, YouTube Primetime, rentable), which ran for eight seasons starting in 1998.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Practical Magic 2”
This article appears in Performing Arts Preview • 2026.
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