Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman to hide the emptiness

Perhaps almost all Hollywood romantic comedies are fantasy films, but a point of interest in the good-witch tragicomedy Practical Magic was the use of purely fantastical elements to metaphorically address traumas such as the fear of the death of a loved one. The late sequel Practical Magic 2 is one of those works that make no sense on their own. And it falls into dynamics similar to those observed in The Devil Wears Prada 2: the characters have not evolved and, furthermore, they relive the dilemmas of the previous work as if they were new. In parallel, the protagonists carry out a fairly generic mission. Their first adventure, a bit strange, included a criminal plot that complicated (and enriched, or made less predictable) the narrative journey. This time everything is more comfortable and timid.

Having lost the battle of content, and without a trace of updates in perspective (there is no nod to feminisms in those contradictory and superficial ways typical of a part of recent audiovisual production), only the aesthetic remains. Filmmaker Susanne Bier (In a Better World) provides a certain visual care that refers to the old Hollywood of the star system: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman and company seem to strive, and the film's team strives with them, to endow some looks with an appearance of emotional weight in the midst of a limited fairy-witch tale. The extended footage will make it difficult for the result to please an audience that does not feel emotional ties to the original.