Director : Jon M Chu. Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Sanaa Lathan, Jay Chou
Two of the stars from 2013’s magician caper Now You See Me, Isla Fisher and Mélanie Laurent, have pulled a smooth disappearing act for the sequel. In Fisher’s case, this had something to do with a pregnancy before cameras rolled, but one begins to smell a rat: perhaps a silicone fake belly, or planned adoption?
They must have figured out what new cast member Daniel Radcliffe has not: that the best attitude to Now You See Me 2 is simply to go nowhere near it.
This inane franchise treats its audience like patsies – essentially casting us as the gullible, whooping masses it puts on screen during its glitzy Vegas conjuring shows, where a trickster posse known as the Four Horsemen keep staging appearances, while finessing simultaneous heists across the world.
Like a coloured ribbon whipping through one ear and out the other, the plot bypasses your brain with overconfident flourishes that can’t disguise how amateurish it all is.
The ridiculous fame of these characters – Jesse Eisenberg,
Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco are now joined by Fisher replacement
Lula (Lizzy Caplan) – already makes them hard enough to like.
But they also come across as certifiable, with their mad banter about false sleeves, bird tricks and habit of endlessly flicking cards about during passages of downtime.
If the camera pulled back to reveal this whole charade as a high-concept production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you wouldn’t be wholly surprised.
The Nurse Ratched trying to quash these bizarre antics is “magic debunker” Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman), who got shafted at the end of the last one, and is now in prison. For circuitous reasons, Mark Ruffalo’s FBI agent (who’s in on the games, remember? You don’t? Never mind) has to bust Freeman loose, but the movie completely bails on the Houdini possibilities of a prison break. He’s granted leave to walk right out – where’s the fun in that?
But they also come across as certifiable, with their mad banter about false sleeves, bird tricks and habit of endlessly flicking cards about during passages of downtime.
If the camera pulled back to reveal this whole charade as a high-concept production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you wouldn’t be wholly surprised.
The Nurse Ratched trying to quash these bizarre antics is “magic debunker” Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman), who got shafted at the end of the last one, and is now in prison. For circuitous reasons, Mark Ruffalo’s FBI agent (who’s in on the games, remember? You don’t? Never mind) has to bust Freeman loose, but the movie completely bails on the Houdini possibilities of a prison break. He’s granted leave to walk right out – where’s the fun in that?
Meanwhile,
the other four are whisked without their knowledge to Macau, where
Radcliffe’s Walter Mabry, the tech tycoon son of Michael Caine’s
insurance bigwig, makes them an offer they can’t refuse: they have to
steal some all-important data-mining chip from under a casino, or else.
Radcliffe makes a good first impression – he’s so darn likeable as an actor, almost embarrassingly sincere, that it briefly looks like he’s going to charm the film out of trouble. It’s tediously inevitable, though, that the boy wizard has to turn bad here, and duplicitous egomania isn’t something he does nearly as well.
Radcliffe makes a good first impression – he’s so darn likeable as an actor, almost embarrassingly sincere, that it briefly looks like he’s going to charm the film out of trouble. It’s tediously inevitable, though, that the boy wizard has to turn bad here, and duplicitous egomania isn’t something he does nearly as well.
So many sequences – take the five
straight minutes of ensemble card-palming needed to purloin that chip –
make no sense even by the film’s own flashy logic. Just when we thought
Eisenberg had reached a nadir of up-himself tomfoolery as Lex Luthor,
he makes rain stop in Greenwich and vanishes into the pavement.
Meanwhile, Harrelson has to play his character’s twin brother, with false teeth and a curly wig, for double unamusement. When we're bored during dialogue scenes, looking at Franco’s will-this-do face becomes oddly hypnotic, if depressing.
Constructed to fool the viewer with layer upon layer of lame cheats and moth-eaten devices, the film has nothing on its mind but sinking you gently into an in-flight stupor.
Meanwhile, Harrelson has to play his character’s twin brother, with false teeth and a curly wig, for double unamusement. When we're bored during dialogue scenes, looking at Franco’s will-this-do face becomes oddly hypnotic, if depressing.
Constructed to fool the viewer with layer upon layer of lame cheats and moth-eaten devices, the film has nothing on its mind but sinking you gently into an in-flight stupor.
