Words can barely convey how much I have always hated the Now You See Me movies. And the fact that Now You See Me: Now You Don’t director Ruben Fleischer (Venom, Uncharted) hasn’t made a great movie since Zombieland doesn’t help. In fact, this franchise can’t seem to hold onto a director, with Louis Leterrier directing the original film and Jon M. Chu (Wicked) helming the sequel from nearly 10 years ago. But stars Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson have a history with Fleischer, so he’s been brought on board to direct this overcrowded, plot-free third entry in the saga about the quartet of magicians known as The Four Horsemen.
Just to refresh (god knows, I needed to): Eisenberg’s Danny Atlas is the master illusionist and ringleader of the Horsemen; Harrelson’s Merritt McKinney is the mentalist and resident hypnotist; Dave Franco’s Jack Wilder throws cards with shocking accuracy and is a sleight-of-hand expert; and returning from the first film, Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves is an escape artist (and also Danny’s ex). I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a secret, but let’s just say Lizzy Kaplan’s Lula (Henley’s replacement in the second film) hasn’t been discarded in this installment. In fact, nobody has. If they’ve ever been in a Now You See Me movie before, they likely return for this film, which I thought might be the farewell chapter, but it sets up a possible sequel rather unsubtly.
As the film opens, the thought-to-be-disbanded Horsemen are putting on their first show in years, but it turns out their new act is actually the product of a group of new illusionists (Justice Smith as Charlie, Dominic Sessa as Bosco, Ariana Greenblatt as June), who are more activists than entertainers and only seem to create large-scale shows in order to expose corruption. When the two groups finally meet, they join forces to take down diamond heiress Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), who has ties to arms dealers, human traffickers, and warlords around the world. As one might expect, the Horseman’s old friend, magician-turned-debunker Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman), shows up to make it clear that the secret society the Horsemen worked under known as the Eye is still very much alive and monitoring their progress with Vanderberg.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is basically just two generations of magicians ribbing each other and planning elaborate tricks that are seemingly impossible in order to steal the world’s most valuable diamond from Vanderberg. That might sound like fun for some people, but the jokes are lame, the “magic” is all special effects, and I’ve never heard of a team of magicians in my life, let alone two of them. In other words, there’s nothing particularly magical about these stupid-ass movies, and they mark three of the most collective wastes of talent ever committed to the big screen. Even the usually quirky and fascinating Pike comes off like a generic villainess who seems more interested in verbalizing to her enemies (in detail) how she outsmarted them than actually doing anything smart. You can make Woody Harrelson look goofy pretty easily in just about anything, but it takes genuine effort to make Pike boring to this degree.
And seriously, these movies feel like they are 80 percent talking. The magicians all take turns standing in front of their audience and explaining every trick before they do it. Yes, bore us with stories instead of carrying out substantial feats of illusion. These films have no actual respect for the art of magic, and that might be the thing that pisses me off more than anything. It treats their abilities like they are superpowers they were born with rather than something they worked most of their lives to perfect. Nobody is naturally good at this, and this film makes its character care more about showy aspects of the profession than the earned skill.
Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, make sure you don’t leave early and miss a cameo by yet another character from the previous films, who dangles the limp promise of a fourth installment before our eager eyes. If these films disappeared forever, that would be a trick I would applaud with both hands.
The film begins playing Friday in theaters.
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