That aside, maybe Practical Magic did become a cult favorite. I won't say classic because IMDb doesn't list it on their top 100 greatest cult films and that list includes movies like Flesh Gordon and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. Yeah, those are real films and Practical Magic hasn't reached those heights yet. Let's just go with calling it a cult film in general, pretend there are more than one hundred people alive who will admit to not only loving the film but can recite every line of dialogue, and move right along. I mean, how else to explain making a sequel to a box office flop that was only generically bad, twenty-eight years later?
Why was I at the screening of the sequel? Good question. Especially when I tell you I never saw the original. I was a freshman in college when that movie came out and my girlfriend at the time was neither a big fan of Sandra Bullock nor of Nicole Kidman, nor was she a wiccan. I decided to see the sequel because I thought it would be interesting - and funny - to see a sequel with no knowledge about the first film beyond "they're witches" and something about bad relationships. And I was correct. It was funny to be one of three lone males watching a romantic drama in a theater full (almost) of women who definitely liked the first movie more than pretty much every other human being.
The movie itself...not so funny. Oh, it tries at times. Bullock and Kidman give, er...performances, that include a bunch of attempts at humor. But those attempts usually fail because the film's tone is all over the place and the premise is taken far too seriously to allow jokes to lighten the mood. The premise, I learned, is that the Owens family are all witches and cursed. If they fall in love, the person they fall in love with dies a horrible death. That's pretty bleak, but you'd think after three centuries of enduring this curse, they'd at least have some gallows humor about it.
To be fair, the movie isn't intended to be a romantic comedy. What it is intended to be is up for interpretation. The film starts with a quick flashback of Sally Owens (Bullock) burying her second husband. In her grief, she extracts a blood promise out of her sister Gillian (Kidman) to never tell Sally's children (Antonia and Kylie) that they are witches. On top of that, Sally casts a spell to make the kids forget what little they do know about witchcraft. Is a blood promise something important in witchcraft? Not in this movie.
Twenty-some years removed from that flashback, Sally's children are grown adults. Antonia (Maisie Williams) is a doctor who is not in love with anyone. Kylie (Joey King) is a college student who is in love with her boyfriend, Gideon (Xolo Mariduena). After Kylie and Gideon express their love for each other for the first time, Gideon is immediately hit by a truck. Literally. A truck hits him and puts him into a coma. When Kylie tells Sally and Gillian, Gillian immediately spills the beans and nothing happens to her. In this movie's version of witchcraft, a blood promise has the same repercussions as a pinkie swear.
Now that Kylie knows about the curse and that witches are real, she grabs a book off her Aunt Jet's (Dianne Weist) desk that might have a way to break the curse, and heads to London. This book is one of the worst parts of this movie. I won't get into how lazy and contrived its introduction is, but we soon find out the book has left-handed magic. We learn from context clues, and the well-known fact that all southpaws are demon spawn, that left-handed magic is bad. Knowing that, why would Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances (Stockard Channing) leave the book just out on a desk where their granddaughters could find it? Granddaughters whom the Aunts blood-swore not to tell about magic and whom the aunts are aware have never been taught how to protect themselves from dark...I mean left-handed magic. Right, right...blood promises are more like suggestions.
If this movie were just about Kylie trying to break the curse, it would be a much better movie. Instead, the three credited screenwriters decided it needed to be much more convoluted. While Kylie thinks she is on the path to discovering how to break the curse, she's being manipulated into a situation where someone wants to steal her powers so he can take revenge on all of the townspeople who made fun of him for his ancestry. Bwaa-ha-lol.
I told you this movie was all over the place. Is it a tragedy? A romantic drama? A fantasy? A farce? You be the judge. I read the synopsis for the original film, which sounded like a confusing mess of nonsense. Somehow, the sequel was more confusing, messier, and nonsensical. And that's not all; the film completely wastes half its cast. Antonia is developed to the point of merely existing, the script sidelining her to watch over Gideon. Aunt Frances hangs out at the hospital with Antonia, occasionally sprinkling salt in the room. And Wiest is straight-up killed off for no other reason than to make sure we know what it means when the death beetle makes its rattle. Lee Pace, playing a professor named Ian who specializes in magic, isn't given much more to do, not even appearing until the second half of the movie. This seems like a good time mention that one of the writers is Akiva Goldman, a man who has managed to win both an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry for screenwriting. It seems Practical Magic 2 got the bat-nipples version of Goldman instead of the A Beautiful Mind version.
Even after sitting through this trainwreck of a sequel, the cultists in the audience applauded. I guess that means they liked it? Or they were drunk because that's how cult films are supposed to be experienced. Does that mean Practical Magic really is a cult favorite? Maybe. But I still say no. At least until it passes that Chainsaw Hookers movie on the cult films list.
Rating: Unless you are a drunk, cult film follower, ask for all of your money back.
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