The Owens sisters are back, and so is the curse that keeps trying to tear them apart. “Practical Magic 2” brings Sandra Bullock’s Sally Owens and Nicole Kidman’s Gillian Owens back together for a fight against the dark family curse, and their scenes together are the only real magic on offer here. Everything else feels put together carelessly.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Sally and Gillian Carry the Story
Bullock and Kidman still know how to play sisters who have survived each other’s worst decisions. Every second they share on screen has a lightness to it, a warmth that no plot device can weaken. That chemistry is why this film works at all.
Joey King and Maisie Williams join as Kylie and Antonia Owens, the next generation of women born into this family’s mess. Xolo Maridueña plays Gideon, Lee Pace plays Ian Wright, and both men circle the edges of a script that never quite decides what to do with them. Susanne Bier gets warmth out of her cast. She does not get control over her story.
The Curse Problem
The premise is simple: the Owens family must confront the dark curse that threatens to unravel everything they’ve built. Simple premises need discipline. This one gets confusion instead.
Akiva Goldsman and Georgia Pritchett’s screenplay tries to service two generations of witches, a small army of side characters, and a mythology that was already crowded before Kylie and Antonia showed up. The result is a mess of pieces that never quite come together. IndieWire called the film “a vivid and sweet celebration that gradually reframes aging as a process of gaining power rather than losing it,” and that idea is truly present in the movie, buried under everything competing for attention around it.
Here is where the plotting goes wrong, in order of how much damage each does to the finished film:
- The curse itself gets under-explained, treated as an obstacle to clear rather than a force with real weight.
- Kylie and Antonia’s arcs crowd out time that should belong to Sally and Gillian.
- Gideon and Ian Wright exist mostly to fill space between the scenes that matter.
- The film’s back half rushes a resolution that the first half never earns.
A Script Put Together in Pieces
The Film Maven put it plainly: “The issue is a wonky script that feels Frankenstein-ed together into an uninspired patchwork.” That reading holds up. Individual scenes land. The seams between them do not.
Bier is a director who can find intimacy in a crowded frame, and she finds it here whenever Bullock and Kidman are left alone to just be sisters. Next Best Picture noticed the same thing, writing that “this film works because of the whimsy present in every second of screen time Bullock and Kidman share.” Take those two out of a scene, though, and the film loses its footing fast.
At 130 minutes, “Practical Magic 2” has room to breathe and still manages to feel both packed and thin. Comedy beats land softly. Romance beats land softer. Fantasy elements around the curse mythology never quite hold together into rules the audience can actually track.
It does not recapture what made the original charming.
Release Details and Where This Leaves the Franchise
The film opened September 10–11, 2026, rated PG-13, and carries the Romance, Fantasy and Comedy genres. Tracking projected an opening weekend of $40–56 million before release; that number is not yet confirmed as an actual result.
| Detail | Note |
|---|---|
| Writers | Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett |
| Release date | 2026-09-09 |
| Running time | 130 minutes |
| Genres | Romance, Fantasy, Comedy |
| Metacritic | 46/100 |
| Rotten Tomatoes | 35% |
A sequel like this needed either a tighter script or a shorter running time. It got neither.
What survives is the bond between Sally and Gillian, played by two actors who never stopped understanding these characters. Everything built around them — the new generation, the returning curse, Gideon, Ian Wright — feels like machinery installed to justify a sequel rather than a story that needed telling. “Practical Magic 2” has moments of real sweetness and a clear-eyed idea about aging as power rather than loss. It just cannot hold that idea together for 130 minutes.
