DIRECTOR: Anne Fletcher
CAST: Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Doug Jones, Whitney Peak, Lilia Buckingham, Belissa Escobedo, Hannah Waddingham, Tony Hale, Sam Richardson, Froy Gutierrez, Ginger Minj, Kornbread Jeté, Kahmora Hall, Taylor Paige Henderson, Nina Kitchen, Juju Journey Brener
RUNNING TIME: 107 mins
CERTIFICATE: PG
BASICALLY…: The evil Sanderson sisters (Midler, Najimy and Parker) are brought back to present-day Salem…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Like a lot of films that achieved cult status long after their initial release, Disney’s 1993 Halloween-themed romp Hocus Pocus was not an immediate hit with critics and audiences. Reviews at the time were mediocre at best, and according to reports its lacklustre box office performance led Disney to lose about $16.5 million; of course, that amount would be recuperated by its much stronger life on home release, where it has rapidly become a seasonal favourite to where people put it on every Halloween like they’d do with Elf or Home Alone every Christmas. The point being, it’s not too surprising to see Hocus Pocus 2, the much-anticipated sequel, skip cinemas entirely and go straight to home release. Even with its established cult following, the risk of theatrically releasing a follow-up to a movie that technically underperformed twenty-nine years ago is still a risk for the studio giant; and besides, Disney+ always needs some solid new content, so it only makes sense for this to be strictly available on streaming instead.
But the real question is, after all these years of waiting for a sequel to this movie, does it cast that same magic as before? Well, it’s complicated, at least for me – I never really grew up with the original film, and only watched it for the first time while doing research for this one, and while I thought it was a silly but harmless family movie upon finally seeing it (and yes, that trio of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker is just as delightful as you probably already know them to be), I would perhaps hesitate to label it the go-to Halloween movie of the season. Hocus Pocus 2 is essentially more of the same, with some fun parts here and there, but not much else to really transcend beyond the cult status that its predecessor had conjured over the years.
Taking place in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts, our young heroes are a trio of local high school girls: Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo), and Cassie (Lilia Buckingham), whose annual tradition of dabbling in witchcraft is thrown into disarray by Cassie wanting to hang out more with the popular kids than her quirky childhood friends. Nonetheless, Becca and Izzy acquire a candle from magic shop owner Gilbert (Sam Richardson) and set out to perform their harmless ritual anyway; unfortunately for them, they’ve been given a Black Flame Candle, which ends up resurrecting the famed Sanderson sisters – Winifred (Midler), Mary (Najimy) and Sarah (Parker) – once more, twenty-nine years after they were last defeated. The sisters are determined to acquire the ingredients for a magic spell that will grant them great power, which they plan to use against the town of Salem, but the high school teens are determined to team up and stop them before they ruin Halloween night.
By and large, Hocus Pocus 2 is another one of those legacy sequels that plays heavily on audiences’ nostalgia for the first movie, often repeating entire elements from said original (such as a big musical number sung by our three main witches in the middle of the movie, this time set to Blondie’s “One Way or Another”), and reciting similar, if not word-by-word verbatim, lines of dialogue. It doesn’t do them terribly, with some call-backs still managing to get a decent laugh every once in a while, but at the same time it plays things relatively safe, sticking to its familiar formula all too closely instead of really branching out to newer developments. The closest we get to this is an extended prologue featuring younger versions of the Sanderson sisters in 1600s Salem, which for a short while does feel fresh enough to carry itself (not to mention the younger actresses playing these parts do a rather excellent imitation of Midler, Najimy and Parker), but sadly too little time is spent on this section for it to really go the distance.
What we get instead is an okay enough retread, with the main attraction once again being the impeccable comedic timing of the Sandersons themselves. As they did in the first one, Midler, Najimy and Parker share a strong screen presence that’s part Looney Tunes and part Three Stooges, and whenever they’re on screen you can practically feel the astronomical levels of fun they are having on set, which shows through their fun and often very funny performances. The rest of the characters, though, are nowhere near as captivating; the three main high school girls are likeable enough, but they’re mostly just your standard Disney teen protagonists that seem to occupy most Disney movies and shows nowadays, while other noteworthy supporting players like Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham (who pops up in one scene at the beginning) and Tony Hale (playing dual roles as a villainous reverend in the 1600s prologue, and the not-so-villainous mayor in present day) are sadly wasted. The characters from the original weren’t especially outstanding either, especially next to the central trio of witches, but they did have some memorable enough moments to carry the scenes that neither Midler nor her co-stars were in. Here, the characters more often than not seem to just be pawns for those main actresses to bounce off of, instead of really shing through as their own selves. By the end, when things wrap up in a slightly anticlimactic sense, you feel more empathy and emotion for the wicked Sandersons than you do the main heroes, whereas before there felt like there was a good balance between both elements.
While it’s not an especially great sequel – and before you ask, I have no idea how it stacks up against the other Hocus Pocus sequel that was released in book form back in 2018 – Hocus Pocus 2 will certainly please fans who have been wanting a follow-up for years. It’s a decent dose of nostalgia, for better or worse, and it will certainly play just as well with families as the original one did; for newcomers, though, it’s harmless enough, but in terms of legacy sequels that come out several years after the fact, it isn’t one that’s worth casting such a powerful spell over.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Hocus Pocus 2 is a substandard legacy sequel that will mostly please fans of the 1993 original with its frequent call-backs and reliance on nostalgia, not to mention the ever-delightful trio of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker, but it does little to expand on its formula, and doesn’t have enough interesting side characters to keep itself levitating.
