TL;DR: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman still have plenty of magic together, but Practical Magic 2 buries its strongest relationships beneath an unnecessarily busy story. A charming reunion trapped inside a sequel that desperately needed more character, atmosphere and room to breathe.

There is something almost suspiciously appropriate about Practical Magic returning nearly three decades later. The original film spent years transforming from modest theatrical success into a full-blown cult comfort watch, powered by witches, doomed romance, sisterhood and enough autumn atmosphere to make you smell cinnamon through the screen. Practical Magic 2 brings Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as Sally and Gillian Owens, alongside Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, and that reunion alone carries considerable nostalgic power. Unfortunately, nostalgia can resurrect a franchise, but it cannot cast a protection spell over an overcrowded screenplay.

The sequel has plenty of ingredients that should work: the Owens family curse, a new generation discovering its magical inheritance, buried family history and a journey beyond the familiar Massachusetts setting. Yet the movie keeps piling mythology and plot mechanics onto characters who would benefit enormously from simply being allowed to exist together. The result isn’t some catastrophic cinematic hex. It is something arguably more frustrating: a sequel where you can repeatedly glimpse the warmer, stranger and more emotionally satisfying movie it might have been.

The Owens women remain Practical Magic 2’s strongest spell

Years after the first film, Sally is now the mother of grown daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams). She’s also still carrying the emotional damage caused by the Owens curse, which condemns the men loved by Owens women to death. Her response has essentially been to put the family’s magical heritage behind several layers of parental firewall, keeping her daughters unaware of their abilities while Gillian, Jet and Franny reluctantly maintain the secret.

That’s fertile territory because Sally’s decision isn’t simply “mother hides important secret because screenplay requires conflict.” It grows naturally from fear. Bullock is particularly effective at communicating how grief has hardened Sally’s protective instincts into something restrictive, and there’s an interesting generational argument buried underneath all the witchcraft: when does protecting your children become denying them ownership of who they are?

The problem is that Practical Magic 2 rarely gives that question enough breathing room. Once Kylie learns the truth and events push the story toward England, the movie accelerates into mystery, pursuit and increasingly dense Owens-family mythology. The emotional fallout should be the main quest; instead, it sometimes feels like the sequel keeps activating side missions before we’ve finished processing the cutscene.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman still make the sisterhood work

Bullock and Kidman remain the obvious reason this reunion has any magic at all. Sally and Gillian are still opposites in useful ways: Sally is guarded and emotionally barricaded, while Gillian remains freer and more willing to poke holes in her sister’s defences. Kidman’s playful energy works particularly well against Bullock’s heavier performance, giving their relationship a familiar push-and-pull without needing to recreate their younger selves.

Whenever the film slows down enough for them to properly interact, you remember why these characters endured. The appeal was never merely that Sally and Gillian were witches. It was that their supernatural problems amplified recognisable anxieties about love, family, loss and the terrifying responsibility of caring deeply about another person.

That’s also why separating characters for substantial stretches feels like such an unnecessary debuff. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest return as Franny and Jet, while Maisie Williams and Xolo Maridueña are among those left with thinner material as the central chase develops elsewhere. With this much talent gathered under one magical family tree, I wanted considerably more ensemble chemistry and considerably less logistical shuffling.

A bigger adventure somehow loses some of the original’s magic

Expanding the story beyond Massachusetts sounds sensible on paper. The sequel draws primarily from Alice Hoffman’s The Book of Magic and digs further into Owens history, with Kylie travelling to England while Sally and Gillian pursue her and seek help from Dr. Ian Wright, played by Lee Pace. That gives the sequel geographical scale and fresh mythology rather than simply rebuilding the first film beat for beat.

Ironically, expanding the map makes the world feel less intimate.

Part of Practical Magic’s enduring identity came from the way its setting, family home, witchcraft and community seemed interconnected. Director Susanne Bier’s sequel has more territory to cover, but it doesn’t consistently turn that territory into atmosphere. The first movie’s particular mixture of romance, darkness, domestic warmth and fairy-tale weirdness was messy in its own way, yet its personality was unmistakable.

Here, the mechanics of getting characters from revelation A to magical revelation B can dominate. The deeper history surrounding Maria Owens and the curse should enrich the family’s mythology, but exposition begins competing with character development. Lore is great—I will happily inspect fictional family trees like I’m preparing for a Dark Souls boss fight—but mythology only becomes compelling when it changes how we understand the people living inside it.

Lee Pace deserved a more convincing romantic spark

Lee Pace joining Practical Magic 2 as Dr. Ian Wright sounds like someone enabled a romance expansion pack, and casting him certainly isn’t the problem. The character assists Sally and Gillian as they investigate the Owens family’s history in Britain, while also being positioned as a possible emotional connection for Sally.

The difficulty is that the relationship doesn’t receive enough carefully developed chemistry to make its romantic possibilities truly persuasive. That’s particularly noticeable in a franchise where love isn’t decorative—it is literally intertwined with the supernatural stakes. If romance is going to challenge Sally’s years of fear and emotional withdrawal, we need to believe in the connection rather than simply recognise where the screenplay is pointing.

Pace has charisma to spare, and Bullock can sell complicated romantic vulnerability effortlessly, but chemistry needs writing as much as casting. Their material shifts between friction and attraction without always establishing the connective tissue between them. The actors can generate sparks; the screenplay keeps forgetting to provide enough kindling.

Nostalgia can’t replace atmosphere

Another missing ingredient is musical identity. Alan Silvestri’s score was integral to the original film’s personality, while Rupert Gregson-Williams’ music here only lightly references that musical legacy. It’s a seemingly small distinction that illustrates the sequel’s larger problem.

Returning franchises often misunderstand nostalgia as recognition. Bring back actors, reference familiar things, deploy callbacks at the correct intervals and wait for the audience’s emotional save file to load. But nostalgia works best when a sequel recaptures the feeling associated with something rather than merely reminding us that it existed.

Practical Magic 2 has the Owens women, the curse and decades of accumulated affection from fans. What it needs more consistently is the strange, cosy, dangerous emotional texture that made spending time in this world appealing in the first place. The magic remains visible, but the enchantment is less reliable.

Verdict

Practical Magic 2 isn’t a disastrous resurrection, and seeing Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest together again carries genuine appeal. Bullock gives Sally’s grief and protectiveness emotional weight, Kidman retains Gillian’s mischievous energy, and the expansion of Owens mythology provides enough material to justify revisiting this family rather than simply reheating 1998.

But the sequel prioritises plot movement, mythology and geographical expansion when its greatest asset is sitting right there in its cast. Joey King and Maisie Williams offer a promising generational extension, Lee Pace brings effortless presence, and the returning actresses remain enormously watchable, yet too many of them are underserved by a story that keeps moving when it should linger. Fans who primarily want another encounter with the Owens family will find pleasures here, but anyone hoping the sequel would rediscover the original’s intoxicating mixture of romance, witchcraft and sisterhood may leave wishing someone had spent a little longer perfecting the potion.