Practical Magic 2 (2026)

Practical Magic 2 (2026)

Everything you’ve witched for.

Twenty-eight years after Practical Magic first cast its peculiar little spell, the Owens witches are back. So grab the salt, dust off the tarot cards and pour another midnight margarita because apparently no Hollywood curse is more powerful than the one demanding every cult favorite eventually receive a legacy sequel. Unfortunately, somebody may have forgotten the most important ingredient: a good reason for one to exist.

Practical Magic 2 once again follows Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman), although plenty has changed since audiences last visited their eccentric magical family. Sally has spent years distancing herself from witchcraft and keeping daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) largely unaware of both their abilities and the Owens curse — the particularly inconvenient family tradition that places the men they love in mortal danger.

That secret becomes considerably harder to maintain when Kylie falls deeply in love with boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), who subsequently winds up in a coma following a traffic accident. Kylie discovers what her mother has hidden from her and heads to England looking for answers, with Sally and Gillian soon following. Waiting across the pond are witchcraft academic Ian Wright (Lee Pace), who quickly develops an interest in Sally, and Thomas Lockland (Solly McLeod), whose connection to the darker side of the Owens history becomes increasingly important as the family searches for a way to finally rid itself of the curse. At least, that’s the idea.

The original Practical Magic was hardly flawless. Its tonal shifts were famously all over the place, and critics certainly weren’t lining up to praise it back in 1998. Yet time has been kind to the Owens sisters. There was personality to that story — romance, darkness, comedy, weirdness and an autumnal coziness that somehow blended into something people became enormously fond of. More importantly, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman were stars. Not “content stars.” Not performers being positioned as the next big thing. Proper, magnetic Hollywood stars who could walk into a scene and immediately own it. Nearly three decades later, some of that power remains.

Bullock slips comfortably back into Sally, bringing warmth and a slightly weary edge to a woman who has spent years terrified that her family’s history will repeat itself. Kidman has less dramatic weight to carry as Gillian, but remains wonderfully watchable whenever her mischievous energy is allowed loose. Together, they still have the easy chemistry that made the Owens sisters work in the first place. That creates a problem when Practical Magic 2 starts looking towards its future. Joey King and Maisie Williams are both talented performers, and King gets considerably more opportunity to demonstrate it as Kylie. Williams is frustratingly pushed to the outskirts for huge portions of the story, leaving Antonia feeling less like half of the next generation and more like somebody the screenplay occasionally remembers exists.

Bullock and Kidman have presence that cannot simply be passed down with the family spellbook. King and Williams are perfectly capable here, but neither combination nor character currently carries the same spark. In fact, even Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing — returning as Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances despite being given disappointingly little to do — make more of an impression simply by walking back into the Owens house. There is an effortless personality to the original quartet that the younger generation never quite matches. Should another chapter attempt to move Sally and Gillian aside and hand everything to their daughters, that missing star power could become painfully obvious.

Lee Pace fares somewhat better as Ian Wright, Sally’s tattoo-covered academic guide to the stranger corners of witchcraft. Pace has charm to burn and makes Ian an engaging addition, even when much of his job involves explaining magical history to everybody else. The budding romance with Sally, however, never generates quite the heat it seems intended to. Ian is clearly smitten, but the attraction feels far more convincing from his side than hers. Pace sells the warm, slightly eccentric gentleman routine naturally; Bullock, meanwhile, rarely seems to be casting the same romantic spell back.

Then there is the story itself, and this is where the spell really starts to fizzle. Loosely drawing from Alice Hoffman’s The Book of Magic, Susanne Bier directs from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel. That is no shortage of experienced hands — or strong source material — yet the result is strangely lifeless. The biggest problem is tension — or the lack of it. Gideon’s condition should create urgency. Kylie’s growing connection to magic should feel dangerous. The Owens curse should hang over everything like an approaching storm. Instead, the story drifts from one revelation to the next with very little sense of escalation. There is plenty happening, but very little of it generates much drama.

Even worse, the entire premise asks audiences to accept that the Owens curse is still hanging around after the 1998 ending went to considerable lengths to suggest it had finally been broken. There is nothing inherently wrong with reopening that door, but doing so demands a compelling reason to drag Sally and her family back through essentially the same ordeal. This isn’t one.

The finale only makes things murkier. After generations of suffering, ancient rituals, hidden knowledge and more than two hours spent searching for an answer, the curse is ultimately broken through a sacrifice whose magical logic never feels properly established. The emotional intention is clear enough, but the mechanics are far less convincing. Why does this finally work? Why now? And if this was always an option, why has nobody across several centuries of Owens history reached the same conclusion? Rather than delivering that satisfying click of a mystery finally solved, the climax leaves you trying to work out the rules after the spell has already been cast. That’s not exactly the reaction a magical finale wants.

Thomas Lockland, meanwhile, never develops into much of an antagonist. Solly McLeod certainly looks capable of causing trouble, but the character arrives too late and is too thinly drawn to become a convincing threat. His motivations are muddy, his presence never feels dangerous enough, and the attempt to inject a more conventional villain into the final stretch only makes an already messy climax even more confusing. For a story about a centuries-old curse, remarkably little ever feels truly at stake.

Beneath all the magical clutter, there is something worthwhile being explored. Sally’s decision to conceal magic from her daughters speaks to parents attempting to protect their children by burying their own trauma. Kylie represents the inevitable moment when the next generation discovers that inherited problems don’t disappear simply because nobody talks about them. Gillian, Sally, Frances and Jet also allow the story to touch on ageing, changing family roles and the gradual passing of responsibility between generations. Sisterhood, grief, sacrifice and the fear of loving somebody when loss feels inevitable remain potent ideas. They just don’t hit particularly hard here.

Visually, the famous Owens house remains one of the nicest things on screen. The rebuilt home retains that inviting mixture of clutter, warmth and slightly eccentric grandeur that made the original setting so memorable. Whenever the story settles inside its kitchen and lets these women simply occupy the space together, a little of the old charm returns. Elsewhere, things are less enchanting. Simon Duggan’s cinematography is polished and perfectly competent, but much of the production carries an oddly glossy, streaming-style sheen. Digital magic effects are more prominent, several exterior sequences lack texture, and the grander supernatural moments never possess the tactile personality expected from a theatrical return this long in the making. Everything looks perfectly respectable. Very little looks memorable.

Sure, the familiar faces are pleasant to see again, and Bullock and Kidman can still conjure flashes of the old appeal. But none of it provides a convincing answer to the biggest question: why did this story need another chapter? The first became beloved because its strange collection of ingredients eventually produced an identity all its own. This follow-up feels like somebody found the old spellbook, carefully measured everything out… and still forgot whatever made the potion special. So pour the margaritas, throw the salt over your shoulder and hope nobody conjures a third chapter too quickly.

Practical Magic 2 has plenty of witches, plenty of spells and surprisingly little actual magic. Practical? Debatable. Magical? Not particularly. Worth resurrecting? Not even with a spell.

2 / 5 – Average

Reviewed by Dan Cachia (Mr. Movie)

Practical Magic 2 is distributed by Warner Bros. Australia