I was intrigued by the first ‘Practical Magic’, directed by Griffin Dunne, who had previously collaborated with Martin Scorsese on ‘After Hours’. That was quite a strange film in itself: ostensibly a fantasy that younger audiences could enjoy, but one which frequently crossed over into much darker and more grown-up territory, not least because of the abusive relationship at the centre of its story.

Now, 28 years later, we have the inevitable legacy sequel, bringing Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as the Owens sisters. But one of the curious things about ‘Practical Magic 2’ is that, rather than building on the original, it actually draws attention to some fairly substantial holes in it.

For one thing, the Owens family curse is apparently still very much in operation, despite the ending of the first film leaving us with the impression that everybody was probably in the clear. Even more strangely, Sandra Bullock’s daughters have grown up without knowing that they are witches at all. They have simply got on with their lives and careers – one of them is now a doctor working in a hospital – while apparently remaining completely unaware of this rather significant piece of family history.

Considering that the curse means the women of the Owens family are destined to lose the men they fall in love with, wouldn’t somebody have thought it might be useful to tell them?

Sure enough, relationships once again have a habit of ending badly. Fall in love with somebody and they may die – or, in this case, end up in a coma. This leads Kylie to discover the Book of Ravens, which suggests there may be a way of reversing the curse once and for all.

So she heads off to England. On her own. Without telling anybody.

This is where the film begins disappearing down some very peculiar magical rabbit holes. Her mother and aunt, played by Bullock and Kidman, naturally go looking for her, which sends them into an increasingly elaborate magical underworld as they attempt to uncover secrets connected to the Owens family going back hundreds of years.

But there is a rather obvious problem with all of this. The film is set in the present day. Couldn’t they just use WhatsApp? Couldn’t somebody trace a phone?

Of course, you can forgive a fantasy film for requiring a certain suspension of disbelief, but ‘Practical Magic 2’ keeps asking us to accept situations that don’t seem to operate according to either the real world or any particularly convincing magical one.

There is even a train which looks like some luxurious relative of the Orient Express, complete with beautifully laid tables, comfortable chairs and a dining car, which we are apparently supposed to believe is simply travelling around modern-day London. It looks lovely, certainly, but it belongs to the same strangely artificial universe as much of the rest of the film.

The bigger problem, though, is that the new characters encountered along the way are barely developed. Some appear to know a great deal about the Owens family’s past, and some turn out to have motives that are considerably less honourable than they initially appeared. But we’ve known these people for about two minutes, so why should we feel particularly betrayed when somebody turns out to be duplicitous?

There’s also an academic covered in tattoos – essentially a tattooed professor who, conveniently enough, knows all about the dark arts. We are invited to wonder whether he is quite who he claims to be, but again the whole thing feels flimsy. There simply isn’t enough investment in these characters for the revelations to mean very much.

And that’s particularly odd because this film is around 25 minutes longer than the original. You would therefore expect it to have more time to develop its characters, mythology and relationships. Instead, it feels as though it has accumulated more ingredients without working out what to do with them.

Relationships are ruptured and then repaired, only to be ruptured and repaired all over again. Characters fall out, reconcile and move on to the next bit of plot, but very little carries any emotional weight.

There is also an interesting irony in the fact that this time ‘Practical Magic 2’ has a female director, whereas the original was directed by a man, and yet I’m not convinced that its view of women has progressed very much in 28 years.

The film talks a great deal about sisterhood, female power and generations of Owens women supporting one another. But underneath all that, it still seems remarkably preoccupied with the idea that women are ultimately completed by men. So much of the story comes back to marriage, romance, finding the right husband and avoiding the terrible consequences of falling in love with him.

Is that really progress?

There’s potentially a much more interesting film here about daughters discovering that their mothers deliberately kept an enormous part of their identity from them. Imagine discovering as an adult not only that you are a witch but that your family knew all along – and also knew that falling in love could place the person you love in mortal danger. Surely that would create enormous resentment and raise questions about whether keeping the secret was an act of protection or an extraordinary betrayal.

But the film never really digs into any of that.

And then there is Nicole Kidman.

Considering that her return is one of the principal attractions of a ‘Practical Magic’ sequel, she seems to have remarkably little of consequence to do. She’s there, certainly, and the film clearly wants us to enjoy seeing these characters together again, but try thinking afterwards about what her character actually contributes to the story.

Perhaps that’s the fundamental problem with ‘Practical Magic 2’. A legacy sequel needs more than the pleasure of seeing familiar faces again. It needs a reason to exist.

This one has plenty of ingredients: witches, curses, romance, family secrets, magical books, mysterious academics, English adventures and the return of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Yet somehow it never finds the spell that binds them together.