Nostalgia is a soft insulating substance that we can use to defend ourselves from the cold, the way that birds use their own downy feathers and the shed fur of mammals to line their nests through the winter and spring. I have been guilty myself of weaving it ever-deeper into my days, hypnotized by reruns of Buffy and celestial-patterned whimsigoth accessorizing to ward off a world that makes less sense to me every day. And though this is a feature of aging and always has been, we live in the age of acceleration, and I think we have it worse than the generations before us.
It is in this aggrieved spirit of drinking spoiled wine from bottles whose labels have long since faded that I bought my ticket to see Practical Magic 2.
The Owens’ mansion in Practical Magic 2 [Warner Bros]
I would warn you that there will be spoilers, but there doesn’t seem to be much point as the sequel retells the same story as the original. Based on the novel The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman, this Susanne Bier film tells the story of the cursed Owens family. Every woman (they are all women; no sons are ever born to these people) will lose her every love (these are all men; no lesbians are ever born to these people) to premature and brutal death. Though the first film was about breaking the curse through the promise of their bloodline and sisterhood and love, they failed. But this time they won’t! Unless there’s going to be a Practical Magic: Power of Three. Then I’m sure there’s some fine print in the curse we’ve not yet extracted all possible revenue from.
Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) has two grown daughters: Antonia (Maisie Williams) and Kylie (Joey King). Antonia has a real job and no plotline. Kylie has red hair and a love interest, so we’ll be spending most of our time with her. Despite a loving tradition of witchcraft handed down by their aunts, Bridget (a wasting Stockard Channing) and Frances (a wasted Dianne Wiest), Sally has decided (again, just like in the first film) to deny her nature and lie to her children about their family’s history and power. Jillian (Nicole Kidman), the drunk, oversexed sister to Sally and aunt to the girls, disagrees with that decision in ways that are mostly played for laughs.
Thus misinformed, Kylie falls prey to dark magic wielded by a frustrated British incel (Solly McLeod) whose power looks a lot like it was borrowed from one of those wizard movies from Scotland that fund the trans genocide. Luckily another man (Lee Pace) stands in the way with a lot of tattoos and convenient esoteric knowledge.
Wind the nostalgia around you now, for the wind is cold and cares only for the cash in your pockets. The things we all loved in Practical Magic are queued up and played again without commentary like my old Loreena McKennitt CDs. Witches jump off the roof of a spectacular Cape Cod by the sea. Midnight margaritas arrive right on time to the tune of that same Harry Nilsson song. Franny and Jet are gotten up in the best maximalist old lady wear and the principals are dressed like bit players on Charmed. The deathwatch beetle clicks the coming of death. But this isn’t enough to ward off the winter of weird that ultimately makes the film unwatchable, let alone eligible for the same cult status of its predecessor.
Nicole Kidman as Gillian Owens and Sandra Bullock as Sally Owens in Practical Magic 2 [Warner Bros]
The score (Rupert Gregson-Williams) is minimal and bare, a shaky echo of Alan Silvestri’s work on the 1998 original. The cinematography suffers from digital clarity that makes the sets look cheap and fake like a TJ Maxx on Black Friday. The blurred Bullock and Kidman are as talented as ever, working hard with their radically-altered visages to carry the definitive emotions of the film. An ill-advised flashback to the original movie in the third act is as unwelcome and distressing as a craving for a fresh peach from the orchard in the depths of winter. Seeing Bullock and Kidman in their old faces is jarring, even sickening as the film returns to the uncanny valley of now. The younger actresses are given little to do, with even King scrambling for anything resembling character motivation beyond being glued to her martyred boyfriend who is comatose for 80% of the film’s unflattering 130 minute runtime.
The story is nonsense – repetition embroidered with a change of setting and some bargain-basement special effects. The core of it is the Owens bloodline, complicated by old-country bastardy and magical laws of inheritance. It is disquieting to live through this renaissance of Nazism and to keep encountering stories starring nepo babies wherein the purity of the bloodline must be defended from low-born upstarts who covet the rights and privileges of their betters. I realized in the movie’s final scene, when I saw a single person of color exchange a meaningful nod with a principal, that they were the only one I had spotted since love-interest Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) had gotten fridged in the first act.
What remains for the rest of us, those whose stories do not begin in crumbling manors and arrive with letters patent attesting our fancy breeding? In Practical Magic, there was a little witch in every woman, and the PTA phone tree could produce an impromptu coven. In the DNA-obsessed sequel (Pace’s character even insists magic is in the RNA! I am not overstating the case!), most of us are NPCs who are welcome to buy the merch.
And what merch! I lost track of the crass and obvious product placements in the film, presented with all the artistry of a QVC broadcast: blenders for margaritas and American whiskey and airlines for jaunting to the blood and soil of the homeland where our ancestral truth resides, as well as the film’s own trademarked doodads hitting the market just in time for spooky season and suckers like us.
Maisie Williams as Antonio Owens and Joey King as Kylie Owens in Practical Magic 2 [Warner Bros]
These are the betrayals of nostalgia, the moments when we realize that we’ve not woven our nests with fur and wool but acrylics and microplastics. This film left me with the disappointment of finding the past not an idealistic paradise we’ve lost, but a place that favored the rich and powerful and left everyone else out in the cold to fend for themselves. This film feels empty and craven because it is. It has nothing to say because there’s no profit in saying something. It has no improvement to make upon the original because it was made by people who are so afraid to grow up they pay professionals to erase time from their faces and ignore the original daughters from the first film (Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip) because their aging would place the film in a future the filmmakers refuse to imagine.
Nostalgia is like asbestos, a soft insulating substance that will make you sick if you keep breathing it in. I saw Practical Magic 2 in a theater with people – with women, everyone at this movie was a woman or at least presented as one – wearing felted pointy hats and quoting it to one another on their way in. Afterwards, the ladies’ room was quiet and subdued. We all walked out into the light, unsmiling and with nothing to say to one another. I shot a short video of my themed outfit that I’d chosen for the showing, feeling stupid and devoid of magic and tricked into spending money on something joyless.
The great trifecta of movies I recommend limiting your exposure to: The Wicker Man (2006), The Craft: Legacy, and Practical Magic 2.
Practical Magic 2 is currently in theaters.
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