★★★

It’s a warm autumn hue that welcomes us back to the Massachusetts of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, this time realised by Bird Box director Susanne Bier. As legacy sequels to muddled nineties flops go, Practical Magic 2 is perfectly fine. Good humour goes a long way here, with an overlong runtime and lack of drive counterbalanced well enough by the sheer charisma of a winning Sandra Bullock. Nicole Kidman returns too.

You’d be hard pressed to evidence any potent clamouring for a follow-up to 1998’s Griffin Dunne original adaptation. Unprofitable at the time and panned by contemporary critics, the film might have been but a footnote on the burgeoning careers of its not-yet A-list leads were it not for the ostensible cult following that has kept the dream alive. A little like Disney’s similarly, recently resurrected Hocus Pocus, then, but with the campy energy and musical numbers subbed for abusive exes and an exorcism. Whatever the flaws, Practical Magic boasted a unique, left field energy. Even so, there’s not a chance we’d be here today had said burgeoning leads not gone on to become the box office and awards cabinet behemoths Bullock and Kidman went on to be. Each steals an executive credit here.

Having spurned Hoffman’s 2017 and 20 penned prequels, Practical Magic 2 adapts the author’s more recent sequel, “The Book of Magic,” with first film writer Akiva Goldsman back on task, alongside Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel. A quarter-century has come and gone (the film spuriously fudges the timeline, retconning the original by a half decade) since the Owens sisters, Sally (Bullock) and Gillian (Kidman), finally saw off James “Jimmy” Angelov. Bier is quick to rewrite their incongruous happy ending, however, with the reveal that Aidan Quinn’s Gary Hallet has gone the way of Sally’s first husband. Turns out it still doesn’t pay to fall in love with an Owens woman. Yep, the family curse is as live and kicking as Gary ain’t.

Determined to shield her daughters – Joey King replaces Evan Rachel Wood as Kylie, with Game of Thrones’ Masie Williams taking over Antonia – from their spellbound heritage, Sally bewitches each to forget the magic within their veins. Naturally this backfires splendidly when a much older Kylie falls for her first true love, Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), only for the curly haired Mr. Right to be promptly hit by a passing car. Out tumbles the truth and the actions transfer to a folksy England as Kylie pursues a cure for the family curse. A rather overwrought Lee Pace and underwritten Solly McLeod await.

Clocking in past the two hour mark, there’s a keen pace wanting here. A joy that is to bask in the comic repartee of Bullock and Kidman – not to mention the luminous and all too brief rat at at of Stockard Channing and Dianne West –  things do rather amble along in an ultimately predictable direction. It’s a shame, too, to find the Owens so narratively dependent on the men in their lives, only late in the day remembering that is the love they share for one another that truly counts: ‘no magic is stronger than sisterhood.’

As befitting any nostalgia porno worth its legacy salt, those convinced of the original’s misunderstood majesty will find solace in callbacks to midnight margaritas, floating brollies and Stevie Nicks. Practical Magic 2 might be a slicker affair than its predecessor but there remains enough of the OG kookiness to carry the baton on. Why else would Bier opt to shoot so much of the film in fisheye? It’s good to be weird. Sometimes.

T.S.