Now You See Me

I remember there was a time when I actually thought that magicians were pretty cool. Granted I was 14 years old, but still there was something fun and exciting about being amazed by illusions and seeing tricks performed in front of you that you would spend days trying to explain to your friends. Now I’m not quite sure when the tide turned on these guys; maybe it’s when David Copperfield and Chris Angel started banging supermodels. Or maybe it was when David Blaine just bored us all to death by sitting in a box for 400 years! Either way, hooking up with hot girls that we never really had a shot at anyway is one thing but don’t clip your fingernails in front of everyone and try and pass it off as magic.

Even though magicians are now universally considered lame, we still as a butter topping consuming society flock to the theater to see movies about them. And to Hollywood’s credit they actually have provided some average to above average films involving these clowns that we used to beat up in grade school. Outside of that painful Burt Wonderstone crapfest, there was the surprisingly not awful Prestige by Christopher Nolan, the dark gem of a movie in The Illusionist, and lastly the best pg movie to come out in years in Oz. So why not try their luck with 4 magicians in Now You See Me.

If you know anything about the director Louis Leterrier, then you know that he is a Frenchie who likes to make sleek, fun, fast paced, and pseudo trashy films that always have a bit of cheesiness in them to keep things light. Well this movie is no different as it stars the fast talking and arrogant Jesse Eisenberg as the lead magician in J. Daniel Atlas. He is recruited by some mystery man or woman to team up with Mckinney (Woody Harreslon), Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Jack (Dave Franco) to complete this master plan laid out for them in the hopes of getting the ultimate reward. What this reward is, isn't explained from the outset.

The 4 of them make it to big time and have a show in Vegas that is bank rolled by their boss Arthur Tressler (played by Michael Caine). However in their latest act, they surprise everyone in attendance by robbing a bank and giving the money to the audience with the promise to do it again. This is where Mark Scruballo and French hottie Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) come in. They are the FBI and Interpol agents put on the case to try and not only figure out how they did it but to stop them before they can do it again. Why not just arrest them? Well they did it presumably using magic, so you never actually saw them take any money.

Overall that’s not a bad premise for a story and Leterrier keeps you entertained with his background as an action director. The movie is full of cool fight scenes, car chases, and yes even a few explosions. Apparently if you are a magician, you are not only the smartest person in the room but you are also predisposed to inheriting martial art skills. But as the viewer you don’t care, as long as they aren’t wearing silly capes and those weird pirate looking shirts, you're good. Blow some shit up and show me more of the hot French girl. The writers do an excellent job of keeping you guessing as to what will happen next or who you can even trust.  Just when you think you have a good grasp on who and what is behind it all, they flip the script on you and you’re back to the drawing board.

The only problem is, you should get up and walk out at the 106 minute mark of the movie, because the last 10 minutes completely ruins it.  I won’t spoil it for you but just know that after giving you over an hour and a half of  fun and sort of believable action; they may as well have had a flying Peter Pan singing Three Six Mafia songs while sprinkling pixie dust everywhere to explain what really happened in the movie. ‘See guys, this is what happens in Never Never Land!” The ending is such a stretch that you actually end up laughing as they are explaining it; completely ruining everything else you saw up to that point. Oh well, in the end I was still entertained for almost an entire two hour period. And because of that, I will give this movie a rating of kind of WEAK!