Practical Magic 2 movie review: You can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat every time. Sometimes, all you can do is pull out hair.

In 1998, Sandra Bullock was still awash in the success of the Speed films and gathering up more, while Nicole Kidman was already a big star. Besides, their joint film Practical Magic wasn’t even much of a critical or commercial hit – though it has had a better afterlife.

However, clearly a lot of people, the two actors now lying on either side of 60 included, thought there was some power left in the old spell to rustle up a Part 2.

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The timelines have been jigged to ensure the women don’t have to be as old as they should be, with Botox smoothening any remaining wrinkles with that. The rest remains as late-1990s as it can, including a woman’s ultimate destiny being love, and half-brained traipsing across two continents for it, unaided by simple technology.

There are ravens, a book of curses, dishy men (if a tattooed “seer”/professor “thrown out by Harvard and Oxford”, and played by Lee Pace, is your thing), some very doubtful clothing for Gillian (Nicole Kidman) and Sally’s (Sandra Bullock) daughter Kylie (Joey King), and a lot of talk about sisterhood and blood that unites.

Though Part 2 also has its share of mumbo-jumbo, thankfully, there is no elaborate magic as such. Gillian and Sally have to haul big suitcases up flights of stairs thrice – yes, thrice. And Gillian’s sorcery barely charms the aforesaid professor, Ian.

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The best part remains the sibling jousting between Kidman and Bullock, with Bullock again showing how underused she remains as a performer with great comic timing.

She knows better than to answer, for example, when the best line a smitten Ian can come up with is: “I love my molecules near your molecules… You know, chemistry.”

Practical Magic 2 movie director: Susanne Bier


Practical Magic 2 movie cast: Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Joey King, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace


Practical Magic 2 movie rating: 1.5 stars