So, I think I would have seen the new Resident Evil over the weekend solely for the fact that director Zach Cregger’s work has greatly impressed me. I loved last year’s Weapons. and his Barbarian was also pretty damn impressive. But my girlfriend, she makes so few requests for movies to see. Usually when we go to see something, it’s something we’re both interested in. So, naturally, when she asked to go see Practical Magic 2, not something I would have likely saw on my own, but when she asked us to watch the original for her birthday, it turned out to be kinda fun and quirky.
Still, this is not the sort of movie I would have gone to see on my own.
The first movie ended with Sandra Bullock’s Sally Owens’s voiceover saying the curse that killed the men the Owens women loved was broken. At the time, I was confused because, well, there was no explanation for that. It just happened or something. Anyway, the second movie opens to reveal that Sally buried her second husband as well, so to save her daughters Kylie and Antonia heartache, she uses her magic to make her daughters forget all the witch stuff, and then she decided to stop using it. She also made her sister Gillian (Nicole Kidman) promise not to tell the girls, a promise Gillian kept. The girls grow up, Antonia (Maisie Williams) becoming a doctor and Kylie (Joey King) an art student.
Things take an ugly turn when, first, Aunt Jet (Dianne Wiest) dies, and then Kylie’s new boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) getting hit by a car and going into a coma. Yes, the curse is still active, and ignorance of the magic is no real protection. However, before Jet died, she found a cursed spell book with pages that promised a way to break the curse, but they’re magically sealed. Not knowing any better, Kylie swipes the book and takes off for parts unknown to find a way to break the curse before Gideon dies. Small problem: the book is all kinds of black magic, so now Sally and Gillian have to find Kylie before something terrible happens. And maybe they can break the curse. Those things are generally good to break.
I said above that I found the first movie charming and quirky. That’s basically true. I never got around to reviewing it here, but it was a fairly harmless movie all told, with a fun cast and some nice banter between two actresses who don’t look even remotely like they could pass for sisters outside of a movie. This movie, legacy sequel that it is, lacks a lot of that quirk. The tone gets a bit more serious at times, and I don’t think these characters or this setting were really built for that. It doesn’t quite just do a retread of the original, but it seems like it might be trying. Yes, there’s a margarita-drinking scene set to the coconut song, and yes, the witches jump off the roof of their old house with umbrellas open to act like parachutes or something. Yes, Sally has a love interest. And yes, the movie mixes magic, family drama, and comedy.
Honestly, it’s fine, but not anything likely to go on my “best of” or “worst of” list at the end of the year. My girlfriend liked it more than I did, but it was more her kind of thing. Oddly enough, that doesn’t happen often. We generally seem to agree on movies, and even when we disagree, it’s not by much. But this was one of two movies we saw this year where she liked the movie more than I did, the other being Supergirl. Here, we both felt the movie itself was fairly predictable, only it bothered her less than it did me, and while I certainly didn’t hate it, I likewise don’t see much of a reason to rush out to see it.
Grade: C
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