A quick question – are you one of those people who, every October pours a margarita at midnight and puts on the same movie it has watched for years? If so, you’re clearly a fan of the Owens sisters and Practical Magic. The critics who reviewed the film in 1998 saw something very different, and with a new sequel, the difference in opinion between fans and critics has gotten larger.
Practical Magic arrived in theaters on Oct. 16, 1998, with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as Sally and Gillian Owens, sisters born into a family of witches and a curse that dooms the men they love. Reviewers were…not kind. The film holds a 31% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 111 reviews, and the site’s critics consensus faults its abrupt shifts in tone while conceding that the chemistry between its two stars made a strong case for future collaborations.
Audiences said something else entirely. On the same page, the film carries a 73% Popcornmeter score drawn from more than 100,000 ratings. That is a 42-point gap between the people paid to review it and the people who kept watching it.
The early days were hard on the people who made it. The movie opened at No. 1 with $13.1 million and then faded, and Bullock has been candid about what followed. “It got quiet,” she recalled. Rotten Tomatoes lists its final domestic total at $46.8 million.
Directed by Griffin Dunne and adapted from Alice Hoffman‘s 1995 novel, with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as the aunts who raise the sisters, the film found its audience long after it left theaters. It has since become an October staple, with its midnight margaritas scene becoming a tradition of its own.
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That loyalty is the reason a sequel exists 28 years later. Practical Magic 2 opened Sept. 10 with Bullock and Kidman back as both stars and producers, Susanne Bier directing, and Joey King and Maisie Williams as Sally’s daughters. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it knocked Spider-Man: Brand New Day out of the top spot at the weekend box office. The original returned to theaters on Aug. 11, a month ahead of it.
The reviewers / fans split continues. The sequel sits at 36% on the Tomatometer from 168 reviews, five points above its predecessor. Its Popcornmeter score, drawn from more than 2,500 verified ratings, is 91%. Rotten Tomatoes summarized the audience response as a nostalgic celebration of family and tradition.
The two films now sit side by side with nearly matching critical scores and a fan base that has grown more devoted with each passing fall. Hoffman has continued the Owens family story in print, and her 2021 novel The Book of Magic helped inspire the sequel.
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