The Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan) return for a second mind-bending adventure, elevating the limits of stage illusion to new heights and taking them around the globe. One year after outwitting the FBI and winning the public’s adulation with their Robin Hood-style magic spectacles, the illusionists resurface for a comeback performance in hopes of exposing the unethical practices of a tech magnate. The man behind their vanishing act is none other than Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), a tech prodigy who threatens the Horsemen into pulling off their most impossible heist yet. Their only hope is to perform one last unprecedented stunt to clear their names and reveal the mastermind behind it all. Along the way, they confront a long time foe in Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a former associate who they put behind bars a year prior. “Now You See Me 2” is directed by the man behind two Justin Bieber films, Jon M. Chu, and is rated PG-13 for violence and minor adult language.
“Now You See Me 2” is all tricks and very little treats. Like its 2010 original film, it relies on the audience to be as completely clueless as the very crowd members that the movie performs for. This film isn’t quite to be taken seriously, with the suspension of disbelief that would be ridiculous even if this was a “Fast and Furious” movie, but there is that element of magic being the solution to everyone and everything. It’s a fun time, but the movie does try to explain these illusions step-by-step, but all it does is have us asking even more questions to how these typical everyday humans can do things like stopping rain in mid-air, pass a computer chip around an entire room from member to member for five minutes without anyone noticing, and a final trick that had me laughing at how dumb the people on the plane truly had to be for anyone to believe it. I won’t spoil much, but the movie serves more as a heist film than an actual instructional about magic, so everything feels out of place and unjustified, almost like we’re watching superheroes doing extraordinary things to save the day. The film does have a great sense of humor, but putting up with it for two hours proves to be challenging.
The film often feels like two different stories being told at the same time, one being the longtime history of rivals Dylan (Mark Ruffalo) and Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman) that is played like more of a chase movie, and the wacky and off-the-wall shenanigans of The Four Horseman and their everyday trials and tribulations. This causes a rift in the continuity flow of the film, causing the audience to change their attitudes for the movie more than once. I personally would’ve preferred more focus on the former as the latter really doesn’t have much to do except being the table dressing for the much more important main course. The Horsemen (Minus Caplan) really just kind of stand around in this movie and are there to make the audience feel like some real effort was put into this sequel that was frankly only half as good as the decent original. Two storyline directions that never get any further resolution are that of the love angle between Franco and Caplan, and the jealousy from three of the Horsemen with Isenberg serving as the team captain of sorts for all of their decision making. These two subplots are wasted and virtually left with nothing to satisfy anyone who felt even the slightest bit of intrigue with their story arcs. There’s a lot of directions that the film goes in that really just feels like it’s wasting time before the big finale, and when that payoff comes, it’s nothing in the way of justifying why the movie was made in the first place.
The comedy is pretty solid for the film, often relying on the charisma of our top-class cast for the movie. A lot of what goes into this movie really relies on them, and the performances are passable even if there is very little material that goes into each of their characters. The additions of Caplan and Radcliffe really inject a healthy dose of charisma and against typecast casting to their roles for the movie, leaving the audience feeling more satisfied than with their two counterparts in the first movie. Radcliffe in particularly portrays Mabry with an air of power-hungry greed that makes his character a very valuable opponent to the protagonists in the film. As for Caplan, she really is the shining star for the movie, granting the female audience a welcome opportunity to immerse themselves in the very fun and patter of the movie’s main cast. Lizzy’s introduction is written as one of the more impressive ones in this movie, and that is because while impressive, you can still see the setup and the logic that went into every trick. This is where the film should’ve stuck in terms of creative direction. I understand that a sequel requires you to up the ante, but the best tricks rely more on showmanship rather than sight gags that can’t quite be explained.
“Now You See Me 2” is a fun experience, but it doesn’t quite reach the storyline depth of the first movie, which really gave the audience the sizzle in originality for the heist genre with the steak in a charming leading cast. This sequel relies more on the tricks themselves, and it’s in that aspect of the film that will provide the verdict for how you feel for the finished product of the movie. It’s impossible not to compare sequels to their first film counterparts, and when you do that with Chu’s latest project, you start to see the wires behind every curtain. The biggest trick to the audience is the loss of two hours of time on a film that frankly should’ve never been made in the first place. “Now You See Me 2” isn’t quite the card that I wanted, but it is the one that I’ve been dealt.
5/10