A Long-Awaited Reunion That Arrives Overdue
Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait for a sequel, and critics suggest Practical Magic 2 feels every one of those years. Opening in theaters September 11, 2026, the Susanne Bier-directed follow-up reunites Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters — Sally and Gillian — alongside returning costars Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, with a next-generation cast that includes Joey King, Maisie Williams, and Xolo Maridueña. [1] The verdict from early reviews is consistent: the stars' chemistry still flickers, but the film around them struggles to justify its own existence. [2]
The Plot: Curses, Comas, and a Cross-Atlantic Chase
The sequel picks up with Sally having suffered yet another loss — her husband Gary, who declared in the first film that "curses only have power if you believe in them," has since succumbed to the very curse he dismissed. [2] In response, Sally casts a spell erasing her daughters' knowledge of their witchy heritage, a decision the script frames as protective and critics frame as implausible. [1][2]
When Kylie's boyfriend Gideon (Maridueña) falls into a coma shortly after she confesses her love — triggering the generations-old Owens love curse — the truth spills out. [1] Furious at the deception, Kylie travels to England in search of a way to break the curse, armed with the Book of Ravens she discovers among great-aunt Jet's belongings. [1] Sally and Gillian give chase across the United Kingdom, enlisting Lee Pace's Ian Wright, a British academic versed in the dark arts, along the way. [2] A young English farmhand named Thomas Lockland (Solly McLeod), whose family history intersects with the Owens', also enters the picture. [1]
Where It Works: Two Stars, One Reliable Bond
Both reviews converge on the same bright spot: Bullock and Kidman. Hollywood Reporter notes that "when the Owens sisters are back onscreen together, blending up midnight margaritas or teasing each other about boys, all those intervening years melt away." [2] Variety acknowledges that Lee Pace generates "effortless chemistry with Bullock," making Ian a magnetic if distracting presence. [1]
Joey King also earns praise. Variety writes that she "brings her A-game as Kylie, a young woman feeling a flood of emotions, amplified by untrained magical abilities, that her repressed mother hasn't prepared her to handle." [1] McLeod, too, is described as "more effective than the film needs him to be." [1]
Where It Fails: Bloat, Sidelining, and Missed Potential
At 130 minutes — a full half-hour longer than the 1998 original — Practical Magic 2 tests patience in ways both reviews find hard to forgive. [1] Variety is the more pointed of the two, arguing that the film "takes forever to arrive at an inevitable destination" and that excluding Ian from the climactic action "feels like a dereliction of duty to the audience." [1]
The treatment of supporting characters draws particular frustration. Wiest and Channing, beloved as the eccentric aunts Jet and Franny, are largely sidelined in favor of the male love interests. [1] Hollywood Reporter concedes their sendoffs are "exactly as pretty — golden sparks, blooming flowers, tears, a Stevie Nicks soundtrack — as they deserve," but laments that the next generation fares worse. [2] Maisie Williams's Antonia spends most of the film at a coma patient's bedside in Massachusetts, while Kylie blunders across England largely alone. [2] The sisters' dynamic, which the original leaned on as its emotional engine, is here given little room to develop. [2]
The script — credited to Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel — is faulted by both outlets for prioritizing plot momentum over emotional depth. Hollywood Reporter observes that "we get only the vaguest glimpse of Sally and Kylie's relationship before it's ruptured and then repaired again," leaving the film's central emotional arc feeling unearned. [2]
A Sequel That Exposes the Original's Cracks
One of the more pointed observations shared across both reviews is that Practical Magic 2 inadvertently reopens questions about the original's quality. Variety argues that the 1998 film was "a meandering, disjointed film that glosses over complexities and reduces insights to feelgood platitudes," and that the sequel, by replaying its predecessor's greatest hits, also replays its weaknesses. [1] The performances, too, draw scrutiny: Bullock's expression "barely changes for the first half of the film," while Kidman "leans aggressively into playing Gillian as an overindulged younger sibling who's chosen to ignore decades of life experience." [1]
Hollywood Reporter is gentler in its assessment, suggesting the film "works better the less you look for any sense of logic, and the more you just lean into the transient joys of watching these actresses bounce off each other." [2] That is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it is an honest one.
The Verdict
Variety frames the film as a cautionary tale about nostalgia: "sometimes the best way to let a beloved experience live on is by leaving it behind in one's memory." [1] Hollywood Reporter lands somewhere softer, calling it "harmless, but hardly enchanting" — a movie content to "provoke a few smiles, before dissipating like smoke with the very next breeze." [2]
What to watch going forward: whether audiences who grew up with the original's cult following turn out in sufficient numbers to reward the sequel's commercial ambitions, and whether the next-generation cast — particularly King — earns enough goodwill to carry a potential third chapter that the film's ending appears to leave open.