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Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

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Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

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Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Some sequels are destined to disappoint

"Practical Magic 2" bet on a devotion that was really just a love of autumn and soft lighting

Published September 14, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

A family of witches. A picturesque Massachusetts house. A legendary curse. A dead husband. At the start of “Practical Magic 2” — the well-anticipated but not exactly long-overdue sequel to the 1998 cult classic “Practical Magic” — the lives of the Owens sisters, Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman), look nearly identical to the first film. But surely, the sequel will shake things up. Who ever heard of a major movie studio throwing $75 million at a follow-up that serves no purpose other than capitalizing on learned nostalgia, exacerbated by social media clip farming and seasonal wistfulness? Why, that would be outrageous!

As if this knee-jerk response were anticipated, Sally reassures the audience that what they came to see will be different than what transpired before. “What’s a good story if things end up the way they began?” she ponders over the narration in the film’s opening sequence, itself a nod to how the first movie begins. Funny, as I watched the sequel’s narrative pieces aimlessly move around the board — following almost the same path they did nearly 30 years ago but without any of the aesthetic charm — I spent the entirety of “Practical Magic 2”  wondering the same thing.

There’s a difference between a film that becomes a cult classic because it’s genuinely underrated, and one that achieves that status through the unholy, rose-colored lens of social media obsession.

So much of the extensive press tour for “Practical Magic 2” — based on the 2021 novel “The Book of Magic” written by........

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