Practical Magic 2 Is Back, But the Real Story Is How Nobody in Hollywood Seems to Age

Practical Magic 2 has Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as the Owens sisters, and for fans of the 1998 original, it’s a warm walk down memory lane. But a review from Slate noticed something most of us just accepted without thinking. Bullock is 62 and Kidman is 59, yet they look remarkably close to how they did nearly three decades ago, and the film never explains it as witchcraft. It just asks you to go with it.

The timeline gets even fuzzier. In the new movie, Sally’s young daughters have grown into twentysomethings, even though the years don’t quite add up. And there’s a detail that really makes you stop and think. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest played the elder aunts in the first film when they were only 54 and 50. Bullock is older today than the woman who once played the old aunt in her own movie.

None of this is a knock on the film or the actresses. It’s genuinely worth celebrating that women in their late fifties and sixties get to carry a major release, because that’s still rare. The harder question is why it takes looking like you never aged for that chance to come along. Out here in the real world, we know plenty of women who’ve grown more beautiful with every year, laugh lines and all.

What do you think? Should Hollywood let its leading ladies age the way the rest of us do?