‘I’ ON CULTURE
Unfortunately, Practical Magic 2 suffers from the fate of most sequels. Essentially, it just sort of comes at you, assuming you know the story from the previous movie, but then just goes nowhere. Add to that the fact that the original was made over a quarter of a century ago, and it feels a bit like moving back into ancient history. While the first was charming if unsubstantial, the current film has removed a lot of the charm. The sisterhood of the two leads, as well as that of their aunts, seems somewhat forced. The new movie focuses essentially on only two of the Owens family, the center of the plot. It loses the feeling of female empowerment that dominated the original and seemed to enchant much of the audience.
Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock), the key inheritor of the family curse in which men the women fall in love with inevitably die, faces tragedy when she and her rather wild younger sister Gillian (Nicole Kidman) create a spell to make Sally’s adult daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams), forget they belong to a family of witches and retain no knowledge of their powers and their curse. However, she winds up watching as Kylie discovers that curse from Gillian after her boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) winds up in a coma. Kylie does some research and runs off to Scotland to find the source of the curse in hopes of saving her boyfriend’s life, learning more of the curse but not understanding the dangers. As expected, things go wrong, and after a lot of strange adventures in which much of the talented cast is wasted, things work out. Although after two hours and 10 minutes, most of the audience had hopes they would have been gone from the theater long before.
Everyone loves Sandra Bullock. Well, perhaps only about 99.9 percent of us, but she just does not really shine in this. Her relationships in most cases are sort of boring. In the first film, she and Nicole Kidman played off each other really well. In this one, Kidman is essentially just a sidekick. The two aunts, brought back for this film, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, might even be more feisty a quarter of a century later, but take only a limited part in the plot. Maisie Williams as Antonia, Sally’s younger daughter, plays a doctor and spends almost the entire film in a hospital room, completely outside the main plot. The only relationship excitement seems to be when Sally meets Ian Wright (Lee Pace), a specialist on the occult, and then there is some real chemistry. But not much really comes of it. Joey King is properly spunky but, frankly, after a while, I doubt many in the audience cared. Solly McLeod was almost a cardboard cutout villain. The movie needed a strong one, but he barely stood out.
Sequels often fail. Yes, there are exceptions. Godfather II is better than the first, and The Empire Strikes Back is better than Star Wars. But both were focused completely differently than the original while building on the original characters. Many of the sequels we have today have forgotten that. Occasionally, I have wondered if we haven’t already seen artificial intelligence putting together unimaginative variations on original films. The really good ones move in different directions. This film just lays there while audiences who enjoyed the idea of a wonderful sisterhood movie a quarter of a century ago wonder what happened.
One major difference between the original and this sequel is that in the first, the focus was on the sisterhood, the relationship between Sally and Gillian, with the witchcraft sort of tossed in as the “McGuffin,” the little extra twist to set it off. Here, the primary focus is on the witchcraft. The same three sets of sisters are here. The oldest ones, the aunts, have remained the same. The youngest barely spend much time together after the start. And the middle pair, the stars, are now in different modes, with Bullock’s character focusing more on her motherhood. That weakens the premise.
Is this a good movie? No. Is it awful? Well, it is too long, but if you like the stars, you will probably enjoy the flick. But considering the costs of seeing a film in the theaters these days, it would probably be best to wait just a bit until it comes to the small screen.
