Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler and Kathy Najimy return as the witchy Sanderson sisters in Disney sequel 'Hocus Pocus 2.'
By one of those coincidences that leads me to suspect witchcraft — or perhaps just the more banal dark magic of social media — this week has renewed some heated online chatter about the dubious cultural legacies of two very different movies. One of them is, which recently returned to theaters as a warm-up act for “Avatar: The Way of Water.
Mini-me also would have been delighted by the prospect of a sequel, if disappointed to hear it would take almost 30 years to get off the ground. That lengthy gestation speaks to the long, weird shelf life of the first “Hocus Pocus,” received as a campy misfire but reclaimed, over the decades, as a Halloween staple and cult classic. It occasioned fan guides, TV specials, theme-park attractions and wildly popular anniversary screenings, some of them attended by ye olde original cast and crew.
Flash forward to the present day, which happens to be exactly 29 years after the events of the first “Hocus Pocus,” when a virginal high schooler ill-advisedly resurrected the Sanderson Sisters for one Halloween night of literally soul-sucking mayhem. That’s what happens again in “Hocus Pocus 2,” this time by way of a rather smarter teenager, Becca , and a very dumb Salem historian, Gilbert , plus some tortuous story logic that brings the evil sisters whooshing back to life.
The Sandersons’ shtick — part sub-Three Stooges slapstick, part “Saturday Night Live” parody of “The Crucible” — is no more clever or inspired than it was in the first movie, but Midler, Najimy and Parker remain such game performers, so adept at vampy antics and menacing facial contortions, that thou wilt not really care.
It has also become, at least in this passably entertaining sequel, a softer, more sentimental thing than in its earlier incarnation. Rather than sucking the souls of Salem’s children, the witches decide to shore up their power with the mother of all spells, initiating anquest for ingredients. No one bursts into Sondheim here , but it all builds to an appreciably moving, even Sondheimian warning to be careful what thou wishest for.
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