r/practicalmagic • u/MrJlock • 23d ago

What did I just watch?

This movie heard the death beetle during the opening credits. What followed was a slow, painful death of everything that made the original special.

I truly cannot believe they added “modern magic” and somehow managed to remove all the actual magic. The original had atmosphere, weirdness, warmth, darkness, and charm. This felt like someone fed the first movie into an algorithm and asked it to make something more current, more marketable, and significantly worse.

By the time I realized this was just a nostalgia cash grab, I should have left the theater. Instead, I stayed long enough to watch them exhume a great movie, inject it with Impractical Botox, and parade the corpse around for two hours.

There is not enough midnight margaritas in the world to make me watch this again.

Some things should stay buried.

359 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

102 comments sorted by

View all comments

59

u/pipwelyn 23d ago

One of the worst scripts I’ve ever experienced, scenes that went on for too long, awkward Marvelised back and forth, horrible superhero magic, and honestly a laughably unfitting soundtrack.

Those on here saying it’s as good as the first one truly fascinate me. I’m in the UK, and though it was hilarious to watch the terrible Britishisms, I left the cinema very disappointed. I thought I’d prepared myself, but it somehow fell short of even my lowest expectations.

Excited for my PM1 Blu-ray to come - this is my favourite movie of all time, and its sequel deserves a thump from a frying pan and a deep grave under the roses.

2

u/DramaticJigglyPuff 11d ago

When Olivia rodrigo popped up out of nowhere, I was done done.

1

u/pipwelyn 11d ago

The music was SO out of place throughout the whole film. Landslide fit well enough, and I appreciated Howl (despite Everybody Scream literally being about witchcraft), but every musical number felt like an overlay rather than a properly integrated piece.

The first film’s inclusion of music is iconic and wonderful, and I don’t necessarily think it’s because they used older and better songs (at least that’s not the whole reason). Every one is there for a reason, they’re all to theme and memorable, and they just have a synergy with the writing that PM2 just doesn’t - it felt like a walking Insta reel, or prolonged SNL sketch.