Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman still have the spark. Practical Magic 2 apparently does not have enough story to match it.
Reviews from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety agree on the broad diagnosis: Susanne Bier’s long-awaited sequel gives fans a welcome reunion with Sally and Gilly Owens, but wraps it in an overlong, predictable and emotionally thin adventure.
The new film, due Friday, Sept. 11, finds Sally’s daughters Kylie and Antonia raised without knowledge of their family’s curse. When danger closes in on Kylie’s boyfriend, she heads to the Owens ancestral home in England to try to break it, dragging Sally back toward the supernatural life she had tried to leave behind. Joey King, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest join the returning leads.
The problem, according to THR, is not the midnight margaritas. It is what comes after them. Bullock and Kidman remain the sequel’s best argument, but the script by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel rushes through grief, family conflict and its supporting characters before those threads can properly take hold.
The historical parallel
Analysis: this is the familiar legacy-sequel bargain. Returning stars can reopen the door, but they cannot furnish the whole house. The 2016 Independence Day: Resurgence also leaned on original cast members while introducing younger characters; it opened to $41.6 million domestically and did not approach the first film’s global haul, as The Guardian reported. That is not a box-office forecast for Practical Magic 2, a smaller supernatural family fantasy with a different audience. It is a useful warning about nostalgia’s limits.
Impact assessment
Bullock and Kidman come out looking strongest: the reviews identify their chemistry as the reason to watch, preserving their value as the movie’s central draw.
Warner Bros. has a more complicated task. In the near term, it can sell the reunion and the original’s familiar charms. But if audiences share the criticism that the new story is hurried, promotion may struggle to turn first-time viewers into franchise fans.
That matters beyond this release. Studios considering their own legacy revivals will keep learning the same expensive lesson: recognizable faces create attention; a new generation of characters needs its own reason to stay.
Scenarios
Most likely: If the contrast in these reviews holds through release week, marketing and audience interest will cluster around Bullock and Kidman, while the younger Owens generation becomes a secondary hook. The film’s appeal would then remain strongest among viewers already attached to the 1998 original.
Upside: If Kylie’s conflict with Sally and the England-set curse-breaking story land as accessible drama, new viewers could seek out the original and give the younger characters a genuine platform for future installments. That depends on the sequel feeling like an entry point, not homework.
Downside: If early audiences find the plotting as rushed and predictable as the critics do, nostalgia may not carry the film beyond its core fan base. Warner Bros. would have less incentive to build further stories around the new characters, even with the original stars still providing the strongest scenes.
What to watch next
Watch whether Warner Bros. foregrounds the Bullock-Kidman reunion or gives Kylie and Antonia equal weight in release-week promotion. Then watch the audience split: are people praising the leads while shrugging at the story, or are the new characters becoming part of the conversation? That answer will tell us whether Practical Magic 2 is a pleasant return visit or the start of another chapter.
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