What The Gilmore Girls and Ross and Rachel Have To Do With Practical Magic 2

September 2026

 

What can you say about a movie...

In which a comely college girl wears a nightgown...

In every scene in the film...

 

That is so unflattering it looks like it belonged to her great-grandmother....

 

As she runs around England trying to save ...

The boyfriend who is so perfect...

He’s cringe...

 

And I can guarantee you any sane woman...

Will tell you that kind of fawning attention...

Is going to drive you crazy eventually...

 

But.. hey...

 

Practical Magic 2 is a romcom...

With witches...

 

So there is much chanting in a strange Latin-like language...

Lots of black smoke...

And objects that move through the air...

 

Starring Sandra Bullock...

Whose character, Sally, seems to be channeling her inner domestic goddess...

In a house that codes so feminine...

You can feel the estrogen seeping through the wallpaper...

 

But Bullock looks so incredibly sad throughout the entire movie...

You sense the actress is still grieving the recent loss of her partner...

And wonder why she didn’t wait a bit longer to make a movie...

 

While Nicole Kidman is diaphanous...

And captivating as the flirtatious and fun sister, Gillian...

 

And after way too many films in which Kidman played an ice queen...

It’s nice to know she can actually move her face...

 

But whoever did the makeup for Stockard Channing...

Should be banned from all future films...

Because you should never put that much makeup...

On a woman of Channing’s age...

Because she ended up looking like a clown...

 

And poor Lee Pace never manages to nail that British accent...

And has even more trouble trying to romance Bullock...

Which was like attempting to get a reaction out of rock...

 

And then there is Joey King as the daughter in the nightgown...

Who looks so much like Rory from The Gilmore Girls...

I started to wonder if someone had figured out how to keep Alexis Bledel from aging...

 

Then I began to think this was intentional...

 

Because The Gilmore Girls came out about the same time as the first Practical Magic...

 

Which was over 25 years ago...

 

Now the original Practical Magic..

Despite being a mess of a movie...

Became a cult classic...

 

Because it was all about sisterhood...

And girl power...

 

So this sequel leans heavily into that message...

 

As if we haven’t had enough of that by now...

 

But the recent controversy surrounding the Lindsay Clancy trial...

Has made a message about female solidarity a bit problematic ...

 

But, in fairness, there is no way this filmmaker could have seen that coming...

 

Now Practical Magic 2 was obviously intended to be the next stop in what seems to be the endless nostalgia tour...

 

For women of a certain age...

 

And that was who was in the theater on the day I went...

And they were responding to the film like they were catching up with an old friend...

 

And it is a tell...

 

When the characters in a movie say...

That Ross and Rachel...

Was one of the great love stories of all time...

 

So to say this movie is aimed at a niche audience...

Is an understatement...

 

Because how many people who weren’t born in the previous century...

Even know who Ross and Rachel were...

 

So I did wonder how Warner Bros thought they were going to make their $75 million back...

Pitching a movie with inside jokes and cultural references for women over the age of 40...

 

Who are not exactly a sought-after demographic for filmmakers ...

 

Who actually want to make money...

 

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