Midnight margaritas are back. The Owens sisters are back. And, thankfully, so is the magic.

Being a teenager in the ’90s, I remember watching Practical Magic for the first time and loving it immediately. I wanted to live in that house. I wanted to grow herbs in the greenhouse. I wanted to grow up and make midnight margaritas a thing. I wanted to own my own botanicals store.

So, after more than 25 years of loving this movie and watching it hundreds of times, I remember hearing in 2024 that they were finally going to make a sequel. I was ridiculously excited, only to discover that we were going to have to wait until September 2026 to see it. At the time, that seemed like such a long wait.

One thing I’ve learned as I’ve got older, though, is that time seems to move faster and faster. And here we are, in 2026, seemingly in the blink of an eye, and Practical Magic 2 is finally in cinemas.

Of course, when there’s more than 25 years between a movie and its sequel, an enormous amount changes.

I didn’t have a mobile phone in 1998. There was no such thing as texting. Social media didn’t exist. No Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or Twitter. MySpace didn’t even exist yet. When physical copies of the first film were released to buy, I bought it on VHS. To connect to the internet, we had dial up modems rather than super fast fibre connections. There was no Google. If we needed to know something, we looked it up in a book. There was no GPS. If we needed to get somewhere, we used a map. And there was no such thing as online shopping. We actually had to go to the mall!

So, making a sequel to a movie after more than two decades and somehow keeping the same magic, tone and recipe that made the original so special was always going to be a tough job.

And plenty of sequels have failed to capture that original feeling. Hocus Pocus 2, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles all left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

So I walked into the cinema excited, but also slightly nervous that I might end up disappointed.

Thankfully, there was absolutely no need to worry.

I loved it.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play sisters so brilliantly, and both look absolutely amazing in the film. The aunts, played by the iconic Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, were everything I needed them to be, and the new cast members did a great job too.

There’s considerably more VFX than there was in the original, but given how much filmmaking technology has changed since 1998, that was inevitable. I’ve seen complaints from some people about this, but personally, I was completely fine with it. For me, it added to the magic rather than taking anything away.

The story was great too. It’s only loosely based on the book, which I imagine may disappoint some fans of the book series, particularly because the story has clearly been adapted to work with the ages of the original cast. But for me, it worked.

I laughed. I cried. And I am not normally a film crier.

But after 25+ years of watching these characters, they genuinely feel like old friends, almost like family. You’ve spent so long with them that you’re invested in what happens to them, and that emotional connection is something that can’t really be recreated with a completely new cast of characters.

Was it perfect? No.

There were moments that were a little cheesy, and there were definitely points where I found myself looking at one of the characters thinking, Surely you realise you’re walking straight into a trap?

But overall, it was everything I wanted it to be.

The house was back. And this time, they actually built it rather than creating it entirely on a studio set, which meant we got to see so much more of it. The garden was there. The whimsical ’90s fashion was there. The tone, the music, the magic, the sisterhood, which is, after all, what witchcraft is really about, and of course, the cocktails.

And then there was some not so subtle product placement that has left me desperately wanting a SharkNinja Slushie Maker.

Unfortunately, when I looked up the limited edition Practical Magic one and saw the $399 price tag, I decided I’ll probably be sticking with my blender when making frozen cocktails.

Because apparently even magic has a budget.

I really hope we’re not waiting another 20 years for the next instalment.

The other two books in the series are set before the original movie, so if they were adapted, we may not get to see Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return, unless, of course, they play their ancestors. But would a Practical Magic movie really work without Sally and Gillian Owens?

Personally, I don’t think so.

So rather than going backwards, I’m hoping they write something completely new that allows us to see Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as the Owens sisters.

Because after waiting 25+ years for them to come back, I’m definitely not ready to say goodbye to them again.

Of course, after the movie we popped in to a bar for a few margaritas – it was 3.30 in the afternoon though so they were midafternoon margaritas! I was back home in my new Primark Practical Magic pyjamas and tucked up in be long before midnight…