Practical Magic 2 Review: This Lazy Legacy Sequel Didn't Put Us Under Its Spell

It's easy to forget just how weird the first "Practical Magic" was (be sure to check out Looper's recap if you need a more in-depth refresher). Remembered fondly as a whimsical supernatural fantasy, it's a consistently jarring tonal clash on a scene-by-scene basis, where a brutal (for PG-13 audiences) scene of sexual assault and murder can sit awkwardly next to potion-making montages and well-worn romcom tropes. Directed by the actor Griffin Dunne, it was almost held together by the heightened, madcap visual sensibility he likely gleaned from working with Martin Scorsese on his out-of-character cult comedy "After Hours," but it wasn't enough to make such an unkempt genre mash-up cohere.

"Practical Magic" is one of the stranger films to have maintained a mainstream following over the years, which is why it's so immediately distracting when "Practical Magic 2" feels so phoned-in and risk averse. It feels like the generic adventure the first one would have been if anybody involved had acted upon a single studio note, despite being adapted from author Alice Hoffman's sequel novel.

Directed by Susanne Bier — who previously worked with Sandra Bullock on "Bird Box" and Nicole Kidman on the TV series "The Perfect Couple" and "The Undoing" – this is the laziest form of legacy sequel. It's set a generation after the last film, but features two leads written like they've experienced no personal growth of character in the intervening 25 years, their relationships with their own witchy elders (Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing) written exclusively in Hallmark card platitudes about femininity. 

Shot by the cinematographer Simon Duggan, whose work with George Miller and Baz Luhrmann has verged into eye-popping, live-action cartoon territory, it looks uncharacteristically flat and televisual, lacking any magic (practical or otherwise) because every set looks like a set, every Massachusetts street evidently filmed on location in London. It feels insultingly phoned in by everybody involved.

This unfortunately extends to both Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman too, who return as Sally and Gillian Owens, witch sisters who haven't been able to escape the family curse that has plagued them for generations, when every man who they love will die. A cold open has Sally beg Gillian to promise never to tell her two daughters (now played by the chemistry devoid duo of Joey King and Maisie Williams) about the curse, but flash-forward to the present day, and eldest daughter Kylie (King) has fallen in love with a boy named Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) at college.

When Gideon comes to surprise her at the family home, the sisters do their best to downplay what comes next — but shortly after Kylie says she loves him the next day, he's hit by a van while cycling. An old spell book has the solution to the curse, but it points Kylie toward a quaint English village where she must go to break the spell and save her now comatose boyfriend before he dies. Her aunts quickly find out her plans and pursue her to the U.K., which looks identical to the filming locations for the American set scenes.

Admittedly, this might be less distracting to U.S. audiences, but for a Brit, it's hard not to have your eyes averted toward such blatant errors like the sisters walking past a restaurant with a U.K. Food Standards Agency hygiene rating sticker in the window (a green sticker every location that serves food in Britain must display, so the public knows it's a clean, safe place to eat) in what is supposed to be a Massachusetts airport. It's frequent small details like this that accumulate to show an overall lack of care to the visual presentation of this heightened world, which contrasts sharply with the elaborate, highly stylized vision Griffin Dunne had in the original movie. 

The most distinctly American detail might be the opening act referencing Cool Whip multiple times a minute, in what would be the most blatant act of product placement if there wasn't a pointless extended scene where Gillian excitedly opens a new Ninja smoothie maker, its box framed in close-up. Kidman is a true living legend, who can enliven the most formulaic of miniseries, and even she can't sell this as anything more than a shameless advertisement.

Like the first movie, "Practical Magic 2" also introduces an unlikely love interest for Sally — although one far less intriguingly conceived than a detective investigating her for the murder of her sister's partner in the prior installment. This is Lee Pace's academic of the arcane Ian Wright, who we meet as the sisters break into his apartment and find him naked and close to death thanks to a voodoo doll curse that's brushed over a lot quicker than it should be. With his knowledge of the supernatural, Ian leads the sisters to the quaint, picturesque village Kylie has traveled to so she can break the curse, and in the process, tries to dazzle Sally with his charm. The only issue is that the Australian Pace's British accent has a weird, clipped affect, overly enunciating certain words and never deviating from a cold monotone, making him feel more like an upper-class serial killer than a potential beau.

This reaches its painful nadir during a moment I can't work out whether was being played intentionally for laughs or otherwise — my audience, drunk on complimentary margaritas, had already started laughing at the film's expense by this point. It also didn't help that Pace's character shared a name with a legendary English soccer player and TV personality, meaning that every reference to "Ian Wright" was met with chuckles by anybody over 35 in attendance. 

The first proper date between Sally and Ian has him introduce her to custard, seductively pouring it over her pie, before delivering some of the creepiest pick-up lines (repeatedly referring to her "molecules") ever committed to screen. I'm tempted to give Pace the benefit of the doubt and believe he read this script and instinctively knew somebody this bad at flirtation had to be played like a closet psychopath, but it undermines the film's attempt at romantic fantasy regardless. If the movie weren't so deathly boring and overlong at 130 minutes, I'd almost recommend it for the sheer insanity of that scene alone.

There are very few legacy sequels that get close to living up to an original, and even with those low expectations, "Practical Magic 2" is one of the weakest that's graced our screens. If I had magical powers, I'd make it disappear.

"Practical Magic 2" flies into theaters on September 10.