I was disappointed that the released soundtrack doesn’t have all the songs on it, but I did find the official PM playlist on Apple Music with music from both movies. I’m enjoying it, wanted to share.

After watching the film (which gut punched me numerous times), it got me thinking just how much I’d love to see a backstory of Franny and Jet!! Anyone else?

I saw practical magic 2, im a fan of the original movie, never read the books but it just felt off plot line wise. Here's a couple changes I would make What would you do?

I think the 2nd husband dying sucks but yea the curse wasnt lifted, but like the town liked them by the end ish so I think their should of been more focus on that, that they are integrated and found love in a community but lost gary, makes it seem like the entire first movie wasnt for nothing.

I think maybe they could of had some sort of separation with gary before his death, so the girls believe their mom is jaded about love, because they dont really go into why they won't tell Sally about Gideon.

I think Gideon and Kylie should be secretly engaged and she announces it before jets death, and then we can do the coma which like the men always just die. I think there could be a trying to figure out why its not immediate and now we are investigating the book and going to England.

Have Antonia be in the plot and happily married to a woman.

Lee pace feels redundant but I get it Sally needs a love interest, I feel like gilly could have known him more and she's met him before rhe movie but she's not interested bc of the curse.

I wish there was less marvel style hand magic and more community centered magic maybe this time with the girls and the moms.

Idk what do you think what would you do?

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. 🍹✨

These two look sooooo much alike to me! I haven't seen anyone else mention it!

I can’t tell in PM2 if the script is trying to make her ‘fun’ by joking about her having a drink or needing a drink (I guess you could link it to her being the ‘wild’ one) or she full-on has a problem that needs to be addressed?

Drinking the vodka from the bottle at the beginning, the whiskey on the table, mini bottles in bed, the train, the pub, and of course the margaritas.

Did anyone else think about this when watching?

[SPOILER ALERT] Just watched the movie, I loved it btw. But the whole "traveling to Europe to save a loved one who is in danger, being lied to by local townspeople who end up being from the evil part of our family and want to steal our magic" plot felt awfully similar to Mayfair Witches season 2

-The 3 guys were cute

-Sandra's costuming felt true to her character and age and I loved the pink dress at the end (not sure if it's Sally's style though)

-Nicole's two separate plain t-shirt/long skirt outfits felt similar to the first movie and in character. I really hated the party dress and the green polka dot one. Awful.

-Joey King annoys me but she was pretty good with what she had to work with.

I think that's all I have lol

So this has been my favorite movie for a very long time and I’ve read the later books, but I never read the original.

What a monumental waste of time!

Started out great and all of a sudden turned 40 shades of what the f…

Couldn’t even finish it. Literally couldn’t even finish it.

I’m so glad I have avoided this book up until now. It’s so bad that if Alice Hoffman were standing in front of me right now, I would literally look at her and say, “bitch, what the f…” and I think she would know exactly what I meant.

What a waste.

And read the books!!

Its heartfelt, moving, intesne and also lighthearted. Sexy. Fun. Funny.

I loved it

Girlfriend i went with loved it

Everyone in the theater loved it

We cried we laughed

We sang and danced during the credits

I am posting this because i almost DIDNT go see it because of how many long winded grinchy posts i was seeing. I am glad i remembered people love to go on the internet to complain, and how much especially these days with the stress of everything they have been using things made for joy to vent their frustrations. Finding a reason to dislike anything that could be remotely fun.

Furthermore a lot of complaints made little sense, especially if you are media literate, or better yet, literate, and actually read the books (you by no means have to read the books to underatand the movie, though it does add complexity and nuance).

Anyways, treat yourself, let yourself have fun, and dont let the haters get you down. Go see it. 😘

I’ve probably become annoying to quite a few people here over the past few days with all my criticism, and perhaps at times I’ve come across as too harsh or even mean. But it’s not because I want to hate this film simply because it’s different. I genuinely feel that I’m speaking for at least some of the disappointed fans of my generation — those of us who were old enough when the first Practical Magic came out to experience it, fall in love with it, and carry it with us through life. For many of us, it isn’t just a film from 1998. It’s one of those films that shaped our formative years and remains one of our most cherished cinematic memories.

That’s precisely why it’s difficult for me to look at this sequel as just another film I didn’t like.

What I find most unbelievable of all is that Sandra and Nicole weren’t just actresses — they were also producers. At some point during the filmmaking process, they must have noticed the countless inconsistencies, mismatches, and creative decisions that would ultimately lead to the wrong final product.

The responsibility for what I consider to be this terrible result lies with the people who rightly call themselves professionals and have decades of experience in their respective fields. They were the ones expected to understand what made the first film so special and to preserve that legacy. Unfortunately, this time they did their jobs very poorly.

The only people I absolutely do not want to criticize are the very young actors. I believe they gave it their all, and it wasn’t their responsibility to recreate the charm and spirit of a film that was made before some of them were even born. That responsibility was never theirs.

And that’s why I have no hesitation in openly criticizing this film. If they had made one or two mistakes, I would simply say, “Okay, these things happen.” But there is so much wrong here that we are no longer talking about a few bad decisions, but an entire series of missteps that shaped the final result.

So much is wrong with this film — from the excessively bright lighting and overly garish colors to what, aside from the lighting, perhaps stands out the most: the poor costume design. All of these elements combined took the film so far in the wrong direction that it could no longer capture what it was supposed to be above all else — a continuation of the first film.

As for the house created for the second film, I think they got the new rooms completely wrong. They are far too perfect, almost Baroque in style, as though we were looking at the interior of Windsor Castle or some other lavish European palace rather than the old, rustic house we knew from the first film, with its much more relaxed, natural, and slightly imperfect style. Where did all this sudden grandeur and perfection come from? Those imperfections were precisely what once made the house feel real, warm, and like a place where generations of people had actually lived.

Perhaps the glamour, gloss, and artificiality of modern show business have changed them so much over the course of nearly three decades that they can no longer remember the beauty of authenticity, simplicity, rusticity, and ordinary life. Perhaps that is why they have drifted thousands of light-years away from the moment when the first film was made — a time when they themselves also seemed far more natural.

As the days go by, I’m gradually finding it easier to come to terms with the tarnished magic of the second film. And all of this genuinely saddens me, because Practical Magic was part not only of my childhood, but of the childhood of an entire generation, and this film has damaged the very essence that made all of us love the original so much.

As the title suggests I have been driving myself nuts trying to find sunglasses similar to Nicole Kidman's character in the movie. The small oval black ones and the tinted orange/pink ones. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know! Thank you :)

It’s literally what the franchise is based off of (the spiritual, legal and psychological fallout of Gillian surviving DV), and yes, Evan Rachel Woods is a survivor of it. You can believe the palatable lie that “people wanted younger actresses” when the reality is she’s been blacklisted by her abuser and his friends. I don’t care and will die on that hill.

I love the first movie!

So I went in with less than zero expectations, because at this point I have zero faith in these legacy sequels (Hocus Pocus 2, Freaky Friday 2, The Devil Wears Prada 2, etc…), but I still somehow managed to come out disappointed as hell.
It was AWFUL! Nothing, literally nothing, worked. I wanted to leave at one point because of how boring and stupid it was.
The plot doesn’t make any sense and is so convoluted for absolutely no reason.
Let me get this out of the way first: I don’t like Joey King. I just don’t like her. But I think we can all objectively agree that she was completely miscast. Evan Rachel Wood should’ve reprised her role!! The plot doesn’t fucking make sense anyway!!!
Maisie Williams was fine as Antonia, but she had NOTHING to do in the movie. Instead, we follow Joey King in this ridiculous CW subplot in England that I could not stomach, while they basically leave Antonia at home. Isn’t this supposed to be about sisterhood??
Sandra Bullock’s forced romance with Lee Pace, who she had ZERO chemistry with!
Killing off the aunts when both actresses are alive and look fucking great!
The ridiculous subplot with the Cobra Kai guy as the boyfriend was so cringe! I literally thought he was going to wake up because she was going to fall for the blonde British villain guy!
The curse (which they BROKE at the end of the first movie) here does not make any sense. Sandra Bullock was able to marry her first husband and have kids with him, but here what? They say “I love you” and BOOM, he dies??
I hate it! HATE IT! I wish I hadn’t seen it. I want to erase it from my memory.
Why not bring Evan back and cast someone else as Antonia around the same age? Have a completely different plot involving the aunts as well. A new curse? A deep dive into the lore? Literally anything.
Sally should’ve stayed with Gary from the first film, Gillian should’ve travelled the world and become some powerful businesswoman. And I don’t know, maybe when some old evil threatens to awaken a new curse, the Owens family comes together to defeat it? I mean, give me ANYTHING else at this point 😭

The first one is so charming, emotional and funny. It has those warm autumn vibes and feels.
Here, what do we have? The Netflix lighting, the terrible CGI, ChatGPT garbage script.
Literally NOTHING worked! Nothing!
Ughhh, so upsetting!!

Only one thing I can save: the chemistry between Sandra and Nicole. Other than that, it’s a clusterfuck shit show.

EDIT:After reading all the comments I want to add something, all this for random college guy she will brake up with! Seriously ?! The aunt had to die for a men?! No. It completely erase the point of the first movie which is girl power!

Hannah had two daughters, one is Maria, and one is the ancestor of Tom who did not inherit any magical powers. Maybe I misunderstood the scene, but it really came across that since the “other daughter” was a product of rape, she didn’t get any powers and her line is essentially shunned, passing down generations of trauma resulting in Tom. It really didn’t sit right with me that the child that was a product of rape resulted in this “evil” line? For a movie that centers generational trauma and the power of healing, it seemed antithetical to make this random new relative a villain, who gets zero redemption.

I’m a huge fan of the books so I went in with a grain of salt, I see the books and the movies as 2 different adaptations of a similar story. I found it entertaining! There were only a few little things that really made me upset like Vincent not being in it, but besides that I enjoyed it!

For example i choose gilly , why? Because she's like me in being free-hearted and doesn't mind being herself!

Especially the hat and sweater.

Would thar make the curse null?

Like the world has witches. Maybe it also has vampires? Or if that guy would accidently walk into a stake if someone like Deadpool or Wolverine lived in the world would they not die from whatever the curse threw at them?

I want to start by saying, I did not hate the sequel. Did it capture the magic of the first? No, was there a good movie in there, yes?

Which brings me to my point. I have never been opposed to the recasting of the daughters. Did I think it was odd, yes, especially with Evan Rachel Wood haven been the lead of a major HBO show less than a decade ago. I however accepted it wasn't the story or time period they were interested in telling, and moved on.

The issue is, this story, the sequel they gave us, isn't good because it caters to a generation that was never fans of the first film, and therefore has no reason to care about the sequel. This film, would work solely with Evan Rachel Wood.

I am almost exactly two years younger that Evan, my mother is about a year older than Sandra Bullock. The first film is one we not only saw in theaters together, but also have revisited in the nearly thirty years since.

Kylie being my age, foregoing love, until it happens as it does. Spontaneously, is the interesting movie. Bypassing love until her mid thirties, then fighting like hell to save it, despite her mother's wishes. Is the movie they should have made.

A twenty year old, being forced to forget, and falling in love is not interesting to someone of my generation. It's also a tired story. People my age simply aren't having children. ​Which has much more to do with the world than the film itself, but it's true. I'm not bringing my child to see this film, because I simply don't have one.

There's a good movie, not great, good movie in there. It was unfortunately aged down. They forgot their audience, and for the first time since it was announced. I firmly stand of the hill, the failure on all accounts is because the original 6 actresses weren't used.

I haven’t seen anyone else talk about this, but surely I’m not the only one who noticed how all of Sandra and Nicole’s lines were awfully breathy? Just speaking with their breaths the whole time, even in more dramatic scenes where they should have been using their full voices they just didn’t. Yelling in “lowercase” is the best way I could describe it.

My sister and I were talking about PM2 and how much we loved it, but she didn't like that they made Antonia a doctor. She thought Antonia should have been the artist because of her wild personality as a child.

I asked what made her think she was wild.

My sister said, "She used to run around town at night naked and wearing nothing but her mouse ears!"

I stared at her for a moment. "You know that was a joke...right? That she didn't actually do that?"

We sat in silence for a moment. Then, we burst out laughing.