Residing at a dismal 30 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, 1998’s Practical Magic was a mess by most measures. Although it saw a family of women turn their magical might on a violent man, the film’s inept fusion of genres and poorly fleshed out story meant it never really succeeded in making much sense.
Though also a box office flop, the film built up a cult following over the years as witchy things have a way of doing, while stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman have never lost their lustre. And so we come to the sequel, which surely can’t be as bad…
Danish director Susanne Bier (of Oscar-winning In a Better World fame) encouragingly takes over from Griffin Dunne at the helm. She’s worked with Bullock before, on Bird Box, and with Kidman on TV’s The Undoing and The Perfect Couple.
The sequel is set 25 years later and picks back up with the Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman), who are still plagued by a centuries-old romantic curse that keeps killing off their menfolk. Joey King and Maisie Williams star as Sally’s daughters Kylie and Antonia, with Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest returning as the family’s elderly and eccentric aunts, Franny and Jet.
The film follows Sally and Gillian as they head to England in pursuit of a devastated Kylie, who is desperate to break the curse once and for all, after her insipid boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) is hit by a car and left on life support.
Clutching the darkly powerful Book of Raven, Kylie is also reeling from revelations regarding her own magical powers. To help them in their quest, Sally and Gillian have been instructed to look up one of Franny’s friends, the intriguingly named Ian Wright. Sadly, it’s not the football and broadcasting legend, this Ian is a heavily tattooed, highly suspicious academic played by Lee Pace, but more on him later.
Although Practical Magic 2 constantly references the original, which it hopes you will fondly recall, oddly, it also very much wants you to forget about Sally’s original daughters and, in an act of shameless gaslighting, ages them down through the casting of much younger actresses, King and Williams. Despite such incongruities, the film is tonally much more sure of itself this time round, with Bier drenching it all in a dreaminess while proving to be herself a much safer pair of hands.
After some wobbly introductory scenes, things click into place when the older Owens sisters head to a very quaint version of England – all cups of tea, ancient trains, pokey pubs and pretty villages. Once there, the film finds its focus, and coasts along on the considerable chemistry of its leads.
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Bullock has been nailing melancholic longing since While You Were Sleeping, while Kidman has a blast as her randy, gin-in-a-tin swigging sibling, who explains that the family curse is "not great for the Tinder bio", but is also the glue holding her sad sister together. Williams doesn’t have a lot to do, but a convincingly distraught King makes the most of her own material.
Presumably in an attempt to further honour the original, this sequel still has its share of catastrophically clunky moments, which are at the very least enjoyable. An awful bit of product placement aside, these mostly involve Pace, who gives a brilliantly bizarre, inordinately intense turn as the aforementioned Ian Wright (incidentally, his full name is mentioned way too many times, which will no doubt be entertaining for British audiences).
The actor’s romantic scenes with Bullock are deeply and unforgettably weird; at one point there’s an attempt at sexy science chat and an exchange of custard, which, remarkably, is not a euphemism.
For all the talk of darkness, there’s not a great deal of that here, but Practical Magic 2 looks suitably enchanting and there are fun spells, great songs and some touching sisterly solidarity, making this a likeable, very mildly spooky start to the witching season. It’s a little on the long side and you may not be able to stop wondering what on Earth is going on with Pace’s performance, but the women make it work.
Practical Magic 2 is in UK cinemas from Friday 11 September.
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