There's not enough magic, practical or otherwise, to go around in "Practical Magic 2," the belabored sequel to 1998's whimsically airy witch-themed comic-romantic-drama about a family of margarita-loving witches in Massachusetts.

Those witches are back, led by Sandra Bullock's Sally and Nicole Kidman's Gillian, the Owens sisters. Their aunts Bridget (Dianne Wiest) and Frances (Stockard Channing) are also back, and they're all joined by a new generation of Owens sisters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia ("Game of Thrones'" Maisie Williams), Sally's daughters.

Those daughters haven't yet been taught the Owens family secret, but they're about to learn it the hard way. These sisters have been hit with an ancient family curse that says they cannot love, lest bad things happen to the objects of their affection. So when Kylie exchanges her first set of "I love yous" with her bland boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), he's almost immediately struck by a car, which Kylie has an inkling is more than a coincidence.

A confrontation with her mother results in her learning the truth about her bloodline, and sends her on a journey to England where she looks to undo the curse.

And it sends the movie on a mundane mission with sputtering narrative momentum, as the script (credited to Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel) itself feels cursed.

At least that's in keeping with the original, which itself was no classic and certainly wasn't begging for a follow-up 28 years later. But in the great IP sweepstakes of modern entertainment, anything that was once old can become new again, and those pre-sold projects tend to take precedence over risky new gambles.

Bullock and Kidman — both older now than Wiest and Channing were in the original, it's worth noting — have a somewhat playful mismatched chemistry together. But director Susanne Bier, who previously worked with Bullock on the Netflix smash "Bird Box," doesn't do anything to maximize their onscreen potential.

Bullock is left playing the flustered, protective role — take a sip of a margarita every time she doubles a line of dialogue and you'll need an Uber to drive you home from the theater — while Kidman plays the more free-spirited of the two. But neither are given much to work with in the entirely incidental story, which is why the movie tries multiple times to spin jokes out of the difficulty they encounter trying to maneuver stairways with their luggage. Suitcases these days, amiright?

Meanwhile, the Kylie storyline drags, and Antonia is stuck playing nurse to Kylie's boyfriend while he lies in a coma in the hospital. Unforgivably, the movie runs more than 25 minutes longer than the original, and it's a real endurance test waiting for those fateful margaritas to arrive.

As a heavily tattooed professor of witchcraft, Lee Pace has some winning moments with Bullock (who's appearing in her first movie in four years), but they're buried underneath a lot of stuff that feels like the movie just spinning its wheels.

The movie keeps serving up dialogue — "No magic is stronger than sisterhood," "we're all pallbearers of our ancestors' pain" — that sounds like either taglines that were pitched for the movie's poster, or phrases meant to be embroidered onto pillows in a witchcraft gift shop. They're indicative of the ways that "Practical Magic 2" never quite finds its reason for being, and if we're being honest, even those margaritas look only OK.

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'PRACTICAL MAGIC 2'

Grade: C

MPA rating: PG-13 (for some violent content, suggestive material and brief strong language)

Running time: 2:10

How to watch: Now in theaters

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