Practical Magic 2 review: Bullock and Kidman return, odd spell holds

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reunite on screen in Practical Magic 2, a sequel the Guardian's review calls "as strange and messy as the first" — one that "still casts a spell" despite its status as unabashed nostalgia bait.

Much has changed since the Owens witches last appeared on the big screen with their practical magic of sleeping draughts, midnight margaritas and generational love curses. The original Practical Magic, released in 1998, arrived as "a compellingly bizarre mashup of genres, aspirational 90s fashion and sisterly affection," starring Bullock and Kidman in their movie-star primes as lovelorn sorceresses in Puritan-lite Massachusetts. In the decades since, movies like it have largely stopped reaching theaters at all.

The nostalgia cycle, meanwhile, has only intensified and tightened. As the review notes, our algorithms are now "clogged with unsolicited sequels and dupes for Bullock's impeccable vintage 90s Levi's."

That makes Practical Magic 2 something of an anomaly. It brings back not only Kidman and Bullock but also Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as their lovingly eccentric aunts. It is, in the critic's framing, "at once a seeming inevitability and... an oddity" — a matrilineal romance comedy (though decidedly not a romcom) starring two 60-year-old women, a rarity in an industry that studies show rarely centers women over 60, let alone over 40.

The reviewer acknowledges there is "no circumventing nostalgia bait," yet finds the project defensible on its own eccentric terms. The original Practical Magic, the review argues, "remains so idiosyncratic in tone and, well, kookiness, that a sequel somewhat appeals."

For audiences, the promise is not polish but continuity: the same odd tonal blend, carried forward by a cast returning intact rather than rebooted with younger names. The film's warm seasonal pleasures, per the review, are real — even if the messiness is too.

Whether a 27-years-later sequel built on 90s cult affection can pull audiences back into theaters for this particular brand of witchy sisterhood will be the test of how far the nostalgia machine can stretch before the spell breaks.