Some sequels are destined to disappoint

A family of witches. A picturesque Massachusetts house. A legendary curse. A dead husband. At the start of “Practical Magic 2” — the well-anticipated but not exactly long-overdue sequel to the 1998 cult classic “Practical Magic” — the lives of the Owens sisters, Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman), look nearly identical to the first film. But surely, the sequel will shake things up. Who ever heard of a major movie studio throwing $75 million at a follow-up that serves no purpose other than capitalizing on learned nostalgia, exacerbated by social media clip farming and seasonal wistfulness? Why, that would be outrageous!

As if this knee-jerk response were anticipated, Sally reassures the audience that what they came to see will be different than what transpired before. “What’s a good story if things end up the way they began?” she ponders over the narration in the film’s opening sequence, itself a nod to how the first movie begins. Funny, as I watched the sequel’s narrative pieces aimlessly move around the board — following almost the same path they did nearly 30 years ago but without any of the aesthetic charm — I spent the entirety of “Practical Magic 2”  wondering the same thing.

So much of the extensive press tour for “Practical Magic 2” — based on the 2021 novel “The Book of Magic” written by Alice Hoffman — has revolved around the original film’s tepid reception. In 1998 and into the new millennium, “Practical Magic” was not the zeitgeisty film it’s become today. It made a relatively meager profit but earned harsh reviews, some of which unfairly maligned the movie as a kitschy Halloween entry into that dreaded chauvinist canon: the chick flick. But in recent years, social media and streaming gave the film new life. Kidman’s auburn hair and tiny sunglasses are the stuff of every Pinterest moodboard. The GIFs of the Owens’ Massachusetts estate, with its cozy fireplaces perfect for pajama lounging, still blow up Tumblr every October. And on TikTok, all the girlies are having a “Practical Magic” autumn, posting fancams, outfit inspirations and indulging in the Owens’ famous midnight margarita tradition.

For a story about witches who have both the curse to kill something and the ability to resurrect it, reappraising a dead-on-arrival film is appropriately meta. But as “Practical Magic 2” quickly reveals, nostalgia is a curse far worse than anything the Owens sisters are working with. 

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.Sign up here

The rub here is that there’s a difference between a film that becomes a cult classic because it’s genuinely underrated, and one that achieves that status through the unholy, rose-colored lens of social media obsession. “Practical Magic” fits snugly in the latter category: a becoming yet narratively disjointed film that can’t seem to pick a tone. But, of course, that contrast can be difficult to distinguish when social media comes into play. 

Clip-farming and aura-posting encourage people to hinge their taste and personality on a piece of media’s baseline aesthetics, rather than its actual content. Even Bullock and Kidman have frequently admitted the sequel is the direct product of seasonal online demand. All that hype has led to “Practical Magic” being misremembered as a movie good enough to spawn a follow-up. And now, with “Practical Magic 2” doing little more than retracing its predecessor’s steps, but stripped of a good chunk of that film’s visual charm, the legacy sequel reminds us that a solid story can rarely be built atop a flimsy foundation. Maybe Sally was right: the Owens sisters’ story isn’t ending up the way it began — it’s ending up worse.

Though, if you enjoyed the first film’s patchy, atonal narrative and convenient plotting, you’re in luck. There’s plenty of that to go around in “Practical Magic 2.” It’s not worth digging much into the film’s story; whether you’ve seen the first movie or just have a general outline of it, you’ll be wholly unsurprised by everything that happens in its sequel. Despite the entire first movie being dedicated to breaking it, the same curse that has plagued the Owens women for generations — every man they love is doomed to die thanks to a heartbroken ancestor who cast a rash spell — is still around. Drat! That sure is unfortunate. But, oh, how easy the curse’s persistence makes it to retread all those familiar plot beats, the same ones that have been removed from their context and posted to death for the last decade.

Now, Sally has daughters of her own, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams), two suitable avatars on which the events of “Practical Magic” can be projected. Even though Sally cast a spell that made her children forget their powers, now that they’re growing up, they can’t escape that darned curse. The Owens’ eccentric aunts, Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest), take a backseat in the sequel, allowing Kidman and Bullock to assume their roles from the first film, while King and Williams eat up a fair share of the runtime. 

I truly don’t mean to be smug, but is this really what so-called fans of “Practical Magic” were clamoring for: a rehash that focuses largely on the new cast members instead of capitalizing on Bullock and Kidman’s palpable charm? Here, their betwitching (ha ha) chemistry is present but thin; Gillian and Sally’s relationship is no deeper than it was by the end of the first installment. 

Most notably, “Practical Magic 2” is kneecapped by a fatal flaw that plagues almost all of these legacy sequels, but this one especially: It’s positively unsightly to look at. Director Susanne Bier has none of Griffin Dunne’s stylistic flair. As an actor himself, Dunne understood how to favor both his stars and his audience with fittingly enchanting lighting, beautiful shot compositions and ravishing set design, none of which are present here, at least not for more than a few seconds.

The sequel is flat and digital, loaded with garish CGI and set decoration that often mistakes boho chic for cottagecore. Gone are the vivid blues and warm oranges and greens, crackling against film grain, that did so much heavy lifting for the first film’s leaden plot. Given how important the look of these films seems to be for the thousands of people who laud “Practical Magic” as the ultimate fall movie, I imagine that the sequel won’t make it into many of those aesthetic roundup fancams next October. 

But Warner Bros. doesn’t care whether a sequel has any modicum of staying power. If it did, the attempt to recreate the first film’s magic would’ve come with plenty of film stock and some colored gels to make sure every shot isn’t washed out in jaundiced yellow. What the studio wants is a return on their investment, and it’s because of that social media demand that Kidman and Bullock reference so freely on the press tour that “Practical Magic 2” exists at all. This is the formula for these legacy sequels: Strip the original film for parts and then Frankenstein those parts into something new. Occasionally, an outlier with something real to say about the new world it’s been thrust into — such as “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” which bucked this trend (but still missed the mark on visual style) — will appear. But they are few and far between.

That’s because legacy sequels rarely take the risks they need to stand alone, worth considering apart from their predecessors. If we live in such a different world now — a world that can manifest and manufacture enough hype to turn a film like “Practical Magic” into a franchise — shouldn’t there be more for the Owens sisters to do than try to break this curse all over again? Wouldn’t an entire town and all of witchy history knowing your family’s lore present its own unique challenges in the age of the smartphone? Wouldn’t age bring new profundity to two sisters who have endured such seismic challenges together? These are fair questions the film never bothers to consider, instead favoring inert dialogue and needle drops that tell the audience when they’re supposed to be moved. “Landslide” in 2026? Give me a break.

But that’s the trouble with sequels like this: When people will show up to see a movie regardless of its content or quality, filmmakers, writers, directors and studios can cut all of the corners they want. Merit doesn’t matter. Big Autumn tricked so many people into believing “Practical Magic” was more than it ever was, and now what legacy the first film did have is tainted by a follow-up that is nothing more than a cash cow being milked dry.

 

I do, however, think it’s important to acknowledge that the first film is a bit more than just autumn porn. “Practical Magic” is a story of family and sisterhood, of the bonds that we make and the ones that we break. For all its fluff, it does occasionally show its teeth, even when much of the story revolves around women whose lives revolve around men. With all its inconsistencies, it still goes down easy, like a glass of warm cider on a crisp evening — but that doesn’t mean all that sugary goodness is exactly good for you in the broader sense.

Still, autumn is pointedly and inextricably linked to “Practical Magic.” Over the last 20 years, social media exploded autumn into a bona fide brand, a capitalist sensation. People wait like hungry dogs at their food dish for influencer Caitlin Covington’s annual fall photo dump. Pumpkin spice lattes arrive earlier every year. Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child is recording songs about candy corn. Upstate apple picking. Costume parties every weekend of October. Sweater weather in a climate of climate change. Aesthetic this, aesthetic that and plenty of SEO-ready lists of cozy fall movies. 

Social media has many users trapped in nostalgia loops, desperately clinging to a simpler era that wasn’t so uniquely mired in digital discontent. How ironic that festive activities that were once natural products of the season have been turned into Instagram opportunities. It makes perfect sense that a film with such finely tuned aesthetic sensibilities like “Practical Magic” would rise to the top of the ultimate autumn streaming picks. The film is simply another way to signal that, as the seasons change, we’re all holding fast to the past.

That begs the question: Would “Practical Magic” have “found its tribe,” as Bullock puts it, if the film took place during any other season? It’s hard to say. But it is worth noting that our second outing with the Owens women isn’t during a sunny summer road trip or idyllic winter. Like the changing leaves that now seem to exist to be photographed and preserved on social media feeds, “Practical Magic 2” is no more than a seasonal ephemerality that will be tossed aside and forgotten by the first frost.