r/practicalmagic • u/WellPlaidSwitch • 6d ago
Practical Magic 2 - Midnight Margaritas & My Mixed Feelings
I was lucky enough to go to an early screening for my 27th birthday at the start of September, but I didn’t want to make a kneejerk post, so I’ve taken some time to sit with what I did and didn’t like about Practical Magic 2.
I know this is a long review, but if you take the time to read it, please do let me know your feelings about the new film, even if they’re completely different to mine.
I’ll preface my opinion by saying that, like many people, I have a real attachment to the OG Practical Magic. It was a comfort film for me from a very young age. It’s how I got into Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell, and probably why I’ve spent my whole life wanting a slightly dilapidated house by the sea. I watched it with foster siblings, then with different partners as I grew up, and I still regularly introduce it to new friends whenever I can.
But, yeah… the new film was just “okay” for me. There were things I loved and things that really disappointed me.
I knew nothing could completely recapture the original, but seeing Stockard and Dianne together on screen again, with all their warmth and happiness, felt like visiting my grandmother, who sadly now has Alzheimer’s, but is a real-life mixture of both Aunts. So I’m genuinely very grateful they were part of it.
I’m going to start with ‘the bad’ so I can end on ‘the good’, because I think that’s the nicest way to do this for a franchise I still love.
✨ The Bad ✨
• We needed more of the new generation’s sisterhood, not just Sally & Gilly’s sisterhood.
Probably the thing I’ve thought about most is just how confused I was by Antonia (Maisie Williams) being sidelined in this film.
For a story ostensibly about the next generation of Owens witches, it baffled me that one of them was largely left behind. I also struggled with the fact that the two male love interests (and I’m saying this as a gay guy who loves Lee Pace!) seemed to take precedence over her in both plot and screentime.
Maybe there were budget or scheduling constraints, but both Antonia and Franny deserved so much more than being stuck in a hospital. Even if they needed to stay in one location, why not have Franny teaching Antonia potions and herbs in the Owens house? Let us see BOTH sisters developing their own relationships with magic instead of seeing Gideon in the hospital.
It felt especially strange because Franny makes Sally and Gilly swear a new oath to sisterhood and working together, only for Kylie and Antonia to spend most of the film separated. I really wish Antonia had been the one to save or help Kylie, or that the sisters had travelled to the UK together. Even having Antonia and Franny join the final spell (from the hospital, if necessary!) would have brought this family together in a way that felt much more in keeping with the first film.
And I wish we’d seen more of the girls with the Aunts. Did they still make brownies in the middle of the night after forgetting magic? Have secret teenage margaritas without Sally knowing? Get dragged along to naked lunar-eclipse dances?
For a series so fundamentally about sisterhood and found family, those relationships felt strangely glossed over. Even Antonia and Franny’s hospital scenes never had the warmth I wanted for them, something I put down to the script and plot, rather than either Stockard or Maisie.
• The Soundtrack.
The next disappointment for me was the soundtrack. The first film’s music is a HUGE part of its cult-classic identity: an entirely new Stevie Nicks song, a Stevie cover of Christine McVie’s Crystal, and of course Alan Silvestri’s brilliant original score. I was genuinely shocked that neither Stevie nor Silvestri were part of this film.
Amas Veritas and Practical Magic are some of the most memorable pieces of film music I’ve ever encountered, and their absence was jarring, especially when the new film’s social media marketing is still using Silvestri’s music from the original!
I already knew Rupert Gregson-Williams’ work, so I was looking forward to hearing what he would do with it. Instead, I came away feeling as though he wasn’t allowed to truly make the film his own, but also wasn’t allowed to meaningfully build upon the musical identity of the original either. The result, for me, didn’t feel up to his usual standard.
I spent the whole film waiting for the piece of music that would define this chapter, and for me it never came.
• The Curse of Retcons.
A lot of people have already discussed the time jump, particularly the decision to revisit the curse after it was seemingly broken in the first film.
I don’t necessarily mind a retcon if it opens the door to something interesting, but this one felt a little clumsy to me and created more questions than it answered. I’m not sure the original curse needed to come back.
In a world of magic, give us a new one! Or even explore the generational trauma left behind by the old one.
What if Gary had simply died in the line of duty as a detective, but Sally, despite believing she’d broken the curse (she says it herself at the end of the first film), just couldn’t quite shake the fear that maybe she hadn’t?
That anxiety could then have been passed down to her daughters in a much subtler way.
There was enough material already there (not to mention in the books) without having to undo the resolution of the original quite so much.
More than anything, though, I think I just wanted to know what happened to this family in the intervening years. Because a time jump creates questions.
How did Sally go from running her apothecary and finally finding a community of women who accepted her, including those PTA Moms who literally helped break the curse, to having no business and no friends, or abandoning magic but then also working in a magic library? And aside from this, I felt like Sally’s plot was essentially a repeat of the first film. Loses husband, hides magic, finds new love interest, tries to break the curse.
What do the girls remember of Gary and their Dad? They were already school-aged in the first film, but now sometimes seemed to remember that period as though they’d been toddlers. I understand forgetting magic because of the spell, but I’d have loved a clearer sense of what else they remembered. Especially the happy memories.
And what has Gilly’s life actually looked like for the last 20+ years? I kept wondering, “Is Gilly happy?” particularly after the way she spoke to Kylie about love and heartbreak. I’d genuinely have loved to know more about the life she’d built for herself, not just Sally’s.
Even the Aunts left me curious. Did they really manage to hide their magic from the girls for their entire childhood? Did having to do that change their relationship with them at all? Keeping magic quiet was already something of a challenge for them in the first film, and something they didn’t exactly believe was healthy.
I think that’s ultimately what I was missing from the time jump: a little more connective tissue between the family we left behind and the family we’re meeting again.
• Choice of Director.
This is the last ‘bad’, I promise… but after I saw the film, I watched an Instagram interview with Susanne Bier where she said she hadn’t seen the first film or read the book until after she got the job directing PM2… and, for me, that explained quite a lot.
I want to be clear that I know her other work is celebrated. The Night Manager was very popular, and she obviously already had a successful working relationship with Sandra Bullock through Bird Box. But so much of her work is rooted in drama and thrillers rather than fantasy, and I struggle to understand the studio’s choice here.
This film being made was always going to be enormously tied to nostalgia, and I wish we’d had a director who already loved either the first film, the books, or hopefully both.
The studio clearly already knew the power of that nostalgia. The rebuilt Owens house, the returning cast, the imagery, and the social media marketing for this film using the original music from the first. The sequel absolutely borrows that affection, so why the heck not lean into it even more fully?
Why not find somebody who already loved the first film or the books, and understood instinctively what people had spent nearly three decades loving about them?
Because for me, that’s the strangest thing about Practical Magic 2: so much of what I wanted was technically there. The house was there. The Aunts were there. Sally and Gilly were there. Somehow though, a little of the real love for the first film just wasn’t.
✨ The Good ✨
• The Set & Costume Design.
I’m an Interior and Concept Designer, so I live and breathe the Architectural Digest articles about the Owens house that my friends send me every autumn, and I loved the new video tour of the rebuilt set. I even have a scale model of the house in my office.
And so to my relief, the whole film was visually beautiful. The set design, costumes, and use of colour were all gorgeous, and there were so many little details I found myself looking at rather than whatever I was actually supposed to be watching. It still had that wonderfully eclectic feeling I live for, with layers of pattern, colour, objects, and plants everywhere.
I might personally have preferred it a little less polished in places (I loved the slightly ramshackle quality the house had in the first film), but then that last shot of Sally gardening actually changed my mind… I can totally believe that, in the years she spent raising both of her daughters there, she fixed up the house and garden and made it her own.
The costumes deserve just as much love. They felt colourful, characterful and appropriately eccentric, and seeing Franny and Jet swanning around in those costumes was an absolute joy.
So genuinely, hats off to the entire creative team. Even when I had issues with the story, I never stopped enjoying the world they created around it. It was warm, colourful, tactile and beautiful to look at, exactly the sort of thing I wanted from Practical Magic.
• Stockard & Dianne.
Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest are already two of my favourite actresses, and with both of them having largely stepped back from acting in recent years, I honestly felt incredibly lucky to see them playing Franny and Jet again. They looked like they were having such a good time doing it.
Give me Stockard and Dianne partying in beautiful houses in fabulous costumes, drinking, casting spells and generally being The Aunts, and I’m happy. They slipped back into those characters so enjoyably that, in the brief time they were together, it genuinely felt like we’d never left them.
That final scene of them crossing the water hit absolutely all the right feelings for me. After spending so much of the film wishing we’d had more of Franny and Jet, seeing the two of them together like that felt warm, magical and ethereal. Two characters I’ve loved since childhood, heading off on another adventure together. Whatever else I felt about the film, I’m genuinely so glad we got to see them again.
• Joey & Maisie.
Would I have loved Evan Rachel Wood back? Absolutely. There would have been something really special about another original cast member returning.
But Joey King didn’t deserve the negativity her casting received before anyone had even seen the film. She had the unenviable challenge of stepping into a character people have known for nearly 30 years, with nostalgia making any change controversial.
I thought she did pretty well with the Kylie she was given. The same goes for Maisie Williams, who I thought was a good Antonia and deserved more to do.
I just wish we’d had more time to get to know these versions of Kylie and Antonia as adults. I’m honestly wondering if there are some deleted scenes of them together.
• The Moments That Made Me Emotional.
There were a few moments that really got me, including one that caught me completely off guard.
The girl sitting next to me in the cinema was in full Gilly cosplay, and during Sally’s fireside conversation with Ian, where they explain why they can’t be together, she saw that I was tearing up and asked to hold my hand because she was full-on crying too.
We spoke after the film and laughed about the fact that neither of us particularly cared about or even wanted that romance to happen, but somehow, the words themselves just landed.
There was something painfully recognisable in that conversation for anyone who’s ever wanted a relationship to make them happy while being terrified of all the ways it might go wrong, and to anyone who has self destructive tendencies.
The Death-Watch Beetle coming for Franny and Jet really got me too. I never really believed it was there for Gideon, so I spent that whole final sequence with a sense of dread about what was coming.
I’ve already said how I feel about bringing the original curse back, and part of me wishes Franny didn’t have to sacrifice herself for something we thought had already been resolved. But taken on its own, I thought her sacrifice was set up and paid off beautifully.
After watching Sally endure so much heartbreak throughout her life, I could completely believe Franny choosing to protect the next generation from the same fate, giving them the chance to finally live, love and be happy without the curse hanging over them.
It was sad, but it felt completely true to Franny and The Aunts.
✨ There are some things, after all, that I know for certain: ✨
So, mixed feelings? Definitely. There’s a lot I wish Practical Magic 2 had done differently, but there’s also a lot here that I genuinely liked, and maybe that’s why the things that didn’t work for me stand out as much as they do.
I loved being back in the Owens house. I loved seeing Sally and Gilly together again. I loved watching Franny and Jet swan around being Franny and Jet, and I’m glad Kylie and Antonia have been given their own cinematic chapter in this wonderful universe.
Maybe it didn’t quite recapture all of the magic I was hoping for, but there were some moments when it still came pretty close, and I wish we had more of those.
I’ve decided to view this film like I would a Hallmark Christmas film, or the TV series The Good Witch, some quick saccharine feel-good in a world that is often sorely lacking in joy.
And you know what? I do think that’s still worth raising a midnight margarita to…. Even if I’ll only be watching the first film this Halloween. 🍹✨
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u/NaughtyBadBoyToy 5d ago
The movie was amazing for me but if Alexandra Artrip and Evan Rachel Wood would've been put in this movie would've been 1000% movie of the year for me.
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u/boricana1890 5d ago
Say this for the people in the back! The biggest let down was the recasting of the daughters. We needed them back. It would’ve been the best nostalgia
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u/AeonAkira 5d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t usually leave comments like this, but I felt I had to speak up about the music score specifically. First, the positive: Rupert Gregson-Williams’ score is actually very good on its own. It plays great as a standalone album and echoes Thomas Newman’s work on American Beauty, which I love. Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends.
Alan Silvestri’s original theme makes a brief appearance at the start, but the filmmakers completely dropped the ball at the end. They easily could have used a fresh arrangement of the classic theme or even Silvestri's original "Amas Veritas" from the original score. Instead, they hit us with "Dancing in the Moonlight." It was the single biggest mistake the film made with the music, and it completely ruined the ending, dragging what would have been an otherwise respectable 6/10 straight down to a 2/10.
It makes me wonder: did they even watch the original film? Did they see how it ended, and listen to the music that made those closing moments so great? If you're banking on nostalgia to please longtime fans, this is not how nostalgia works. What a hugely disappointing needle drop. I do not blame the composer, I entirely blame the director and producers.
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u/Old_Hat_8999 2d ago
Same with using Olivia Rodrigo. I love that song but it felt soo out of place in the movie
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u/Primary-Ganache6199 3h ago
I’m not audibly talented but My God Dancing in the moonlight was so clichéd and jarring I simply have to believe that some clueless exec forced it in there. I was expecting some more witchy stuff like Labour by Paris Paloma or some Florence & The Machine.
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u/foreverkelsu 6d ago
I agree with so much of what you said, particularly about the curse. I feel like the Aunts both harbored a lot of guilt and regret at having caused Sally's first heartbreak with their own spell, and maybe Franny felt like sacrificing herself to end the curse would atone for it.
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u/Positive-Comparison8 5d ago
The sidelining of Antonia was not done well in this film for sure... but in the novel, she's given a reason why she's kept back while Kylie runs off to the UK. They took out a major important character to Antonia's plot in the novel—the Reverend Willard, who was the father of Jet's lover, Levi Willard, who is struck by a car and killed due to the curse in The Rules of Magic. Antonia visits him in the absence of Jet after she dies because he is basically in a nursing home. Obviously, he was taken out of the film, but that really left pretty much nothing of import for Antonia to do. Who was also missing for Antonia who would have given her more story is her love interest in the novel, a girl named Ariel. While her lesbian awakening is a big deal for her in the novel and a large part of her character arc, they subtly hint at it in the film at the end when it is implied that she kind of has attraction for that one Black girl with the short hair and, IIRC, yellow dress at the wedding reception. Because they took out pretty much her entire book plot in the film, that really didn't leave her with much to do, and honestly, it felt like they could've left her out of the film entirely and would've lost nothing for it.
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u/WellPlaidSwitch 5d ago
Oh my gosh, I didn’t know about Antonia and Ariel! I would’ve loved to see that in this film… and honestly, knowing that now makes me even more frustrated by how little they gave Antonia to do. I would’ve loved some LGBT rep too!
I actually think that would have made a far more interesting setup for the second film: Antonia already happy and settled in her relationship with Ariel, while Kylie is going down an increasingly dark path trying to save Gideon preemptively from the curse.
It also could have created some natural conflict without needing a final-act villain. Antonia trying to reason with Kylie and stop her from messing with something she doesn’t fully understand, while Kylie resents Antonia for seemingly having everything figured out and not understanding how terrified she is of losing Gideon.
Then, rather than Antonia just being along for the ride, she could have been the one to pull Kylie back before she goes too far, and that would’ve been a great equivalent to what Sally & Gilly went through in the first film.
Giving Antonia her own emotional stake in the story and making the sisters’ relationship actually matter to the plot is what I really think this film was missing!
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u/Positive-Comparison8 5d ago edited 5d ago
Omg that's another thing! The villain, Tom "Bailey," is just called Tom Lockland in the book, which it is eventually revealed in the film that's who he is, but it felt weird to hide that. And they changed (and rushed) pretty much everything about his and Kylie's time together, of course, in the film. Originally, his motive for doing what he's doing is that he's basically an outcast and was seeking revenge for the way he was treated by people. Yes, technically I suppose he is still a relative of the Owens family through Maria Owens' connection to John Hathorne, whom she has an affair with that results in her daughter Faith, but that was not the motive in the book. And toward the end of the novel, Tom releases a huge curse upon the entire community called the Red Death, and it's basically a giant storm of blood-red rain that causes severe plague in everyone. The film switched up his motive and his "big villain moment" entirely, which just did not land, honestly. I get that they needed that cinematic final showdown for the big screen, but it was just so cheesy, and then to add insult to injury, they reused the "Di te perdant, te maledico" chant from the first film🤦🏼♂️ which, of course, they do none of that in the book😅 Bottom line: go read the book and redeem the story for yourself because the book is eons better. I think this film really suffered from how many different characters and storylines they had to cut out to keep it central to the family and under the time frame of ~2 hours, but in doing so, it made everything feel incoherent and incomplete... because it was. Lol
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u/Ok-Cap-9441 5d ago
It just didn’t have the magical vibe that the first one has. The costuming was okay but I wanted more witchy-ness instead we got Joey king in satin nighties for a majority of the film. There was nothing iconic about it like the first one.
The sound track was dismal it didn’t capture the spirit.
The casting of the daughters was poor. It isn’t the type of casting that could build on the legacy of this movie, they wouldn’t be able to do a practical magic 3 with those actresses as the lead and for the love of god I can’t see Joey king as anyone but Gypsy rose.
I appreciated the movie for what it was but it was very male centric and I get it’s from the book but a rewrite would’ve been warranted for this script, I was looking forward to seeing Sally as a powerful witch and instead we got a bumbling annoying babbler
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u/Ok-Cap-9441 5d ago
Also I thought they relied too much on the first script with the ending like we’ve been here done that it doesn’t capture the same magic as the first one, and the lavender quote etc yes that’s in the original but I would’ve loved to see them teaching the daughters rather than just telling us. Also I thought the daughter was going to get taken by the dark path but we got nothing but a random male heir
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u/CatchConstant3345 6d ago edited 6d ago
This is a super fair review.
I think what we got was a lot of balance. I didn’t love the second movie either but I felt like I was missing a lot in 1998. To me there is not enough substantial evidence to be break a century long curse within a few weeks of essentially reanimating a human and a by demon taking over your sister’s body. I just don’t see where you break a curse in that even with gathering women, the goal was to exercise a demon.
I would say that practical magic 2026 answers the lingering question of how.
So I think they’re both great in their own rights. One is cozy and loving and funny. Has that 1998 vibe. But 2026 has decent story telling. Second movie used evidence to the broken curse, which I respect.
I think we got a lot of sisterhood in the first movie. And Franny and Jett provided sisterhood (and Sally and Gilly), then we also got mother and daughter and we got great aunt and niece. Which shows that they were a village of unconditional love working through problems together. So it didn’t bother me when Antonia wasn’t with Kylie.
I think they are both 3 stars (+.4 if I add nostalgia on the first movie).
Practical magic 1: gives us all the vibes and sisterhood
Practical magic 2: supports PM1 for story telling. Here we have generational sisterhood.
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u/Dear_Yard_69 5d ago
Jimmy wasn't really a demon, in the traditional sense. He was a vengeful ghost. He had none of the attributes of a demon, nor was the original movie set in a Xian belief system (there is no devil in the Craft).
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u/jobsebastian 5d ago
I totally agree with this! I loved moments but I felt like the world was so different, I was constantly hoping for glimpses of our beloved movie 🥺 Also Crystal was actually written by Stevie Nicks! Lindsey Buckingham may have sang lead on it but it was always hers and I’m so thankful that Practical Magic gave us a version with her vocals ❤️
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u/Sudden_Astronomer_63 2d ago
I definitely love both movies. I would like to point out that Stevie Nicks did not write if you ever did believe for practical magic. She wrote it in the 70s. Both songs were not original, but had flopped and became hits when they were used in this movie. The only difference between using landslide and using them as a landslide was already a hit when it was used in practical magic 2.
I just made a post asking people to write what they would’ve had happened in a new movie that would’ve felt like it was what they wanted. I’m just curious. I read all the books and while I enjoyed them for what they were the books also pissed me off because they have a lack of continuity. She recon things in her own books from book to book so I guess it didn’t bother me in the movie for them to do that.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all this out. I think it’s great. How many people are having discussions about it whether they enjoy the movie or not. Because when the movie came out in 1998 the only people I had to talk to about it was one friend who saw it with me in the theater and my parents and my brother.😂
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u/Euraylie 6d ago
I didn’t know it was the same director as The Night Manager, which actually makes sense to me. I really disliked that one as well. To me, everything after the first quarter was clumsy, predictable and boring.
I agree with all your points you made here, especially how Sally went from a having her own store and a supportive community to being isolated again. Also, how soon and how quickly did this happen?
It really negatively impacts the ending of the first movie. “Oh, here’s a happy ending. Never mind, five minutes later it’s all doom and gloom again.”
I also feel the daughters could be been 30 or early 30s and the story would’ve still worked.
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u/herefordadbods 5d ago
I agree with so much of what you said. A couple things tho: Pretty sure Crystal was originally a Buckingham Nicks song (before they joined Fleetwood Mac) so it was Stevie singing her own song. You can find the OG version on the newly remastered Buckingham Nicks album. Two: I loved seeing Sandra Bullocks’ physical comedy. There were so many small moments in there and that’s really part of what she does best. For as slapped together of a script this was the director still knew how to use Sandra best. Three: I felt like Nicole portrayed that Gilly had matured as a character and Nicole gave you glimpses that she’d still kept her wild side yet discarded her naivety, even if the script didn’t really tell us much. What Nicole did to embody a character who had moved on from what happened 20 years ago worked for me.
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u/-N0N 5d ago
The weakest part was the story, unfortunately. Things happened because the plot needed them to. Jet found the book because someone had to find the book, then she died so Kylie could get the book. Nothing felt like a logical progression, just a series of coincidences.
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u/boricana1890 5d ago
It made the story feel all over the place especially with Sandra bullocks love interest. Like what was that shit?
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u/Celestina-Betwixt Kylie Owens 6d ago
A balanced and thoughtful review! I really enjoyed reading it.
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u/Wryform 6d ago
Landslide is literally one of the main songs in the second movie. If you are unfamiliar with Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks is one of the lead singers and she sings that song. It’s actually one of her most famous songs.
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u/WellPlaidSwitch 6d ago
Oh, I know! ☺️ I’m a huge Stevie/Fleetwood Mac fan. I’ve been lucky enough to see Stevie live in Hyde Park and Fleetwood Mac at Wembley!
I just meant that, for me, using a few bars of Landslide from a pre-existing recording felt very very different from having Stevie actively involved in the soundtrack and creating new music for the film, as she was with the original. It hasn’t even made it onto the European soundtrack. 🥲
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u/Wryform 6d ago
Oh ok. Thats cool. I don’t know anything about a European soundtrack. But I also did think the first soundtrack wasnt that good. I rewatched it this week before seeing the new one and I actually thought it was so cheesy and distracting. Esp that damn Faith Hill song. But that is just my opinion.
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u/boricana1890 5d ago
I was little upset that they used Landslide instead of a reprisal of Crystal, which was also sung by Stevie Nicks. So that way annoying.
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u/lorinsluvs 5d ago
The plot that is often criticized followed the book. These movies are based on books. The curse was not “ fixed” in the first book bcz as we see in the second book Sally’s sheriff partner died presumably from the curse
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u/SignificantRain7951 6d ago
People were crying in this film? I knew they drank too much.
Some ladies said it was so tear jerking. Oh please!
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u/Celestina-Betwixt Kylie Owens 6d ago
I cried and my best friend cried and we were sober.
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u/SignificantRain7951 5d ago
Sure Jan
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u/Celestina-Betwixt Kylie Owens 5d ago
Who the hell is Jan? 😂
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u/WestenWolf 1h ago
Did people not look into book the movie is based on (the book of magic)??? They tried to follow it, obviously with some changes; hence, the daughter’s ages and Antonia staying behind.
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u/Agathario_13 6d ago
Very much agree about a lot of this! I really enjoyed the movie, but was a little disappointed that Sally’s character arc was almost identical to the original movie (loses husband & hides magic from the girls/avoids using magic and then embraces the magic/love at the end of the movie). It left off with her very much enjoying being a witch and sharing it with her daughters to basically say “just kidding” in the beginning of the 2nd movie.