Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:41)
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 21:23)
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod. Directed by Susanne Bier.
REVIEW: Fans of the original film will welcome the return of the supernatural Owens sisters, but newcomers may find the sequel less than magical.
Set twenty-five years after the events of the first film, the Owens family of witches, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) and eccentric aunts Frances (Franny) and Jet (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest), has expanded to include Sally’s daughters Kylie (Joey King, in the role originally played by Evan Rachel Wood) and Antonia (Maisie Williams). They are a tight knit group, but Sally hasn’t told her daughters that they have magical powers or about the family curse.
“No magic is stronger than sisterhood,” says Aunt Frances. “Cast by fate, tested by time, and never broken.”
When Kylie falls in love with “tall, dark and possibly cursed” Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), he becomes the latest victim of the family’s centuries old curse.
“Everyone we love dies,” says Sally. “It’s not great for the Tinder bio,” says Gillian. “We’re Owens women. Love is our undoing.”
Desperate to break the curse’s cycle, Kylie jets off to England, with Sally and Gillian in hot pursuit, to get to the bottom of their family history and the curse that has fated their loved ones to die. “I’m gonna go fix this,” she says.
A legacy sequel with one foot planted firmly in the past and the other in present day, “Practical Magic 2” offers callbacks to the original, a hint of romance, lighthearted humor, curses and witch’s spells. It’s a bit of a hodge podge that binds together the disparate elements with fan service and good will.
Bullock and Kidman effortlessly slip into their roles of the quarter century ago, recreating the same kind of chemistry that made the original film a hit, but it is Dianne Wiest as kooky Aunt Jet who finds the balance between warmth and comedy.
It’s a fine line in an unnecessarily complicated story that involves a missing daughter, a century’s old curse, and an innocent man in a coma because of the family hex. The very survival of the Owens family hangs in the balance, and yet, Sally and Gillian still find time to goof around. One minute they’re in tears, wondering if they’ll ever see Kylie again, the next Gilly is de-pantsing Sally and telling her to lighten up. The comedy doesn’t match the situation and Bullock’s sharp way with a line often breaks the film’s dramatic spell.
“Practical Magic 2” is bewitched with its characters. Perhaps a little too much. Even at just a titch over two hours, the film feels overlong, padded with character work, subplots and moments that don’t forward the story. By the time we get to the feel-good ending–with Sally and Gillian using their powers to make margaritas–it feels like the movie delivers more tricks than treats.
It seems to be an unwritten rule that the best superheroes are birthed from troubled family backstories. Bruce Wayne witnessed the brutal killing of his parents, Spider-Man was orphaned at an early age and Superman was exiled from his home planet of Krypton and never met his parents. The big screen adaptation of “Blue Beetle,” a DC superhero movie now playing in theatres, breaks with tradition. “My family? That’s what makes me strong,” says Jaime Reyes a.k.a. Blue Beetle.
When we first meet Reyes, played by “Cobra Kai” star Xolo Maridueña, he is an ambitious recent college grad on the hunt for a job. Back home in Palmera City his family is in financial trouble and Jaime wants to help out.
His job search puts him in contact with a sentient ancient alien relic known as the Scarab, which kind of looks like a fancy broach my mother may have worn in 1978. The powerful, parasitical piece of biotechnology chooses Jaime as its symbiotic host, transforming the young man into the superhero Blue Beetle. Grafted together, Jaime and the Scarab now possess a glowing armor-clad blue suit and powerhouse abilities like flying through space, the manifestation of weapons and more.
“The universe has sent you a gift,” says Uncle Rudy Reyes (George Lopez), “and you have to figure out what to do with it. Maybe this time we get our own superhero.”
Trouble is, Jaime doesn’t want to be a superhero, despite being chosen by the Scarab. “How do we get it to un-choose me?” he asks.
Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), the super villainous CEO of Kord Industries, understands the power of the Scarab and Jaime’s Blue Beetle, and knows how to take control of it. “Target the [Reyes] family!” she says.
“Blue Beetle” makes history as the first Latino DC superhero to lead a film, but the freshness that comes along with that is overwhelmed by the usual superhero dross. The emphasis on family gives the movie a nice vibe that sets it apart from other DC movies, but the strength Jaime garners from his family and culture does not strengthen the plot as a whole. It still a superhero origin story. That means it comes weighted down with details, exposition and the usual getting’ to know you, getting’ to know all about you, tropes.
It does attempt to go deep with subplots about marginalization, resistance and even a little body horror woven into the story, but again, those elements are overshadowed by the accompanying bombast.
Maridueña cuts a swathe through the CGI noise and fight scenes with considerable charm and kind of an “aw-shucks” sensibility that grounds his high-flying character. As the comic relief, Lopez gets a few laughs and Sarandon is deliciously amoral as the billionaire villain, but this is Maridueña’s show.
Culturally “Blue Beetle” breaks ground in its depiction of Latino culture but as a superhero movie, it is the same old.
