After nearly three decades, Practical Magic 2 had a tall order to fill in conjuring the same magic as the original 1998 adaptation of the Alice Hoffman book.
While the sequel is sure to serve as an entertaining day at the movies with mom, it reads a bit more Harry Potter than Witches of Eastwick in this long overdue reunion between Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witchy Massachusetts sisters Sally and Gillian Owens.
Based on Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic, the Susanne Bier-helmed followup picks up shortly after the original, with Sally’s soulmate Gary (portrayed by Aidan Quinn in the first movie) succumbing to the curse that kills anyone who falls in love with an Owens woman. In order to spare her daughters Kylie and Antonia (originally portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip, but recast with Joey King and Maisie Williams for the sequel) the pain of the curse in their own lives, she casts a spell to erase all their memories of magic.
Cut to 25 years later, Kylie begins to uncover the family secret when her own love Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) gets injured in a life-threatening accident. Setting off to break the curse, she follows an ancient book and mysterious visions to the U.K., where her ancestor Maria Owens was born before moving to Massachusetts. Sally and Gillian go after her, teaming up with their aunts’ academic colleague Ian Wright (Lee Pace) to take on a dark force that threatens their family.
Watch on Deadline
Whereas the original Griffin Dunne-directed film was a romantic slow burn, rich with emotion and passion, the sequel wastes no time getting into the action of the plot. That might fit a modern streaming formula of capturing an audience’s attention before they can pick up their phone, but the second chapter lacks a unique character-driven flow that made the first such a timelessly enjoyable watch.
King doesn’t quite get the chance to build the necessary chemistry with her soulmate before Maridueña slips into an onscreen coma for the majority of the film, depriving them the childhood sweetheart backstory of the book. So… why should we care if the curse takes him too?
Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman and Maisie Williams are relegated to side roles with no apparent lives of their own, unlike the book that gives Gillian and Antonia each their own love story. As for the aunts Franny (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Weist), they seemingly only exist to [SPOILER ALERT] die in sacrifice to their younger counterparts.
Another character that was reprised for the sequel was the Owens family seaside house, originally built as an architectural shell on San Juan Island for the first movie, but recreated this time in the U.K. Unfortunately, the house only gets about 15 minutes of screen time as the Owens women swap the cozy setting for the beautiful England countryside.
Although Bullock has teased she wants to “pass the torch” to the next generation of witches with a potential trilogy-concluding installment, I’d be more intrigued to see the franchise go in the opposite direction. With two prequel books in Hoffman’s series, The Rules of Magic (2017) follows the magical coming-of-age of Franny, Jet and their brother—Sally and Gillian’s grandfather—Vincent in 1960s New York City, and Magic Lessons (2020) goes back to 1600s, tracing Maria’s journey from learning magic as an orphan in England to following her lover to Salem, Massachusetts, where her heartbreak ultimately sets the family curse.
So, while Practical Magic 2 is not quite as satisfying as the original, failing to capture what made it so magical in favor of a nostalgia-driven IP grab, it lays the groundwork for a franchise that could take the opportunity to redeem itself.
Title: Practical Magic 2
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release date: September 10, 2026
Director: Susanne Bier
Screenwriters: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Lee Pace, Joey King, Maisie Williams, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hrs 10 mins
