★½ (1½ out of 4)
Midnight margaritas! That’s the most fun thing I remember about the first “Practical Magic” in 1998. The margs are back in the sequel, which is good. Sadly, good is otherwise in short supply as I proceed to the matter at hand, a review unfortified by tequila and lime.
It’s too bad about Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman: Whoever loves them dies. At least that’s what happens to the Massachusetts sister witches they playact in “Practical Magic 2,” now in theaters where it aims to knock Spider-Man off his No. 1 perch. Good luck with that. The follow-up may need help from Elphaba and Glinda to pull it off.
The legacy sequel to the pokey 1998 original shows the sisters still dealing with the Owens family curse which decreed a short life to suitors who identify as he/him. The curse wasn’t kidding. Gilly Owens (Kidman) picked a serial killer, so no loss there. Older sister Sally (Bullock) chose a sweetie who hung about long enough to father her two kids. But things have been less fecund ever since. OK, maybe not for Gilly, who sneaks around and practices magic that her sister has put on permanent hold.
The Owens girls, plus their witchy aunts, again played by the luminous if ill-served Dianne Weist and Stockard Channing, have had enough. Circumstances to be explained incite them to take leave of Edward Gorey’s New England playground and fly to England to the family manse to end for keeps this foolish ban on testosterone.
The change of scenery doesn’t do much for the draggy pacing. At two hours and 10 minutes, the sequel is nearly half an hour longer than what came before. Speaking of the original, it was yawned off the screen by critics and audiences 28 years ago. No one liked the dreary mess Hollywood made of the dark mischief of Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel.
Then, like everyone in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” universal amnesia overtook the populace. Suddenly, “Practical Magic” was no longer the bloodless bore that even the Kidman/Bullock chemistry couldn’t save. Somehow, presto-change-o, 28 years of availability on tape, DVD and digital streaming made the flop a tone poem to sisterhood, a tribute to female empowerment that demanded a sequel.
I wish. Even the trek across the Atlantic can’t goose any life into the plodding plot dreamed up by Akiva Goldman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel from Hoffman’s 2003 novel. Worse, director Susanne Bier (“Bird Box”), in for Griffin Dunne, treats the script like holy writ instead the verbal Styrofoam it is. Perhaps it was sisterhood that replaced Dunne with Bier, who directed Bullock in “Bird Box,” and Kidman in “The Undoing,” but Dunne showed hints of darkness that better reflected Hoffman’s books.
I’ve given this sequel the lead spot in this week’s blog not to bang on about its faults but to regret its unrealized potential.
When Sally’s 20-ish daughters, Kylie (Joey King in for the much-missed Evan Rachel Wood) and Antonia (Maisie Williams), learn they’ve been brain blanked into losing their agency, there is hell to pay. Kylie is the first to jet off to old Blighty with her mom and aunts in hot pursuit. She’s furious that her bf Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) is comatose from a car accident. She means to set things right, with Antonia left behind to nurse the accursed Gideon.
In an already overlong movie, the filmmakers inexplicably mix in peripheral male characters, including mysterious farmhand Thomas Lockland (Solly McLeod) and dark-arts academic Ian Wright, given welcome swagger by Lee Pace that attracts Sally in ways the script never gives him sufficient space to develop.
And that’s the case with “Practical Magic 2,” a meandering mess that’s also a missed opportunity. I’ve given this sequel the lead spot in this week’s blog not to bang on about its faults but to regret its unrealized potential. Hoffman has reflected that her recurring attraction to writing about witches stemmed from her own life and how her feelings as an outsider related deeply to the perspective of being someone on the fringe who longed for normalcy. That theme gets lost in the noise of producing a crowd-pleaser that keeps dodging its more daring danger zones. All’s well that ends well like it did in the original, with everyone dancing to Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut.” But someone’s failure of nerve forgot to put the lime in this coconut, like the sting of something acidic on an open cut. That’s the trouble with “Practical Magic 2”—there’s no sting to it.