Now You See Me 2

The first installment was entertaining, the second one not so much, to the point of boring me. The whole film felt like someone was trying so hard to fill it with interesting action until he went too far and the whole thing blew up in his face like in "The Begum's Fortune." I was having fun only in the moments when Lizzy Caplan got to speak. I just wish there had been more of them. (02/10/2016)

All of the shortcomings that plague the first Now You See Me are repeated here and a few new ones are added in for good measure. Though Now You See Me 2 looks expensive, stylish and flashy like a Las Vegas casino, which corresponds to the megalomaniacal performances of the four protagonists/illusionists, it still has a rather weak and moronic story full of holes and nonsense. The protagonists are able to easily carry out robberies within ten minutes that even Danny’s crew in Oceans 11 couldn’t pull off with many hours of effort. And of course they can hypnotize or put anyone to sleep for several hours with just a snap of their fingers, so absolutely anything can happen in the film and then it will be explained by the fact that a number of the characters acted while under hypnosis. This enables the filmmakers to endlessly create surprising twists, totally pulled out of their asses and doctored up with dozens of feeble screenwriting crutches. The plot goes in ten different directions simultaneously, with everyone scamming everyone else and, in addition to apparently unlimited funds to carry out their unbelievable illusions, the quartet of protagonists have incredibly stupid adversaries (what sense does it make to get rid of a magician by dumping him in a lake in a locked safe that you know is a prop used for an escape act?). Watching Now You See Me 2 is like watching a recording of a magic show with the knowledge that the illusions and magic are done digitally, and the magician then cheekily explains how he did the trick, but in a way that it couldn’t have been done. P.S. I would really be interested in knowing how much the casting of Daniel Radcliffe is a result of the filmmakers finding it funny to have Harry Potter in a movie about magicians. (21/02/2021)

The fact that it's completely, utterly, truly, truly moronic (I was actually on the verge of blowing my own head off at the end) wouldn't have mattered in principle if the film had exploited the potential of its subjects, which is enormous. The characters do perform a variety of spectacular tricks, but we wouldn't even hazard a guess as to whether the actors could pull off even a single one of them, given how terribly digital it all is. Sequences of ingenious team tricks, whose timing and spatial distribution could be accentuated with an elaborate one-take shot, are destroyed by countless cuts and slow-motion sequences along the lines of "The second one from the left, or the third one from the right. Basically, the one in the trench coat. Here, I'd better show you." Moreover, in terms of dispensing information, the film doesn't really know how to approach the viewer, and shyly gropes its way to where it wants to let the audience go, even though they’ve long since lost interest in digging through the overcomplicated death-in-a-family-evil-corporation-our-privacy-revenge-mafia-blablabla plot. All my love, however, goes to Lizzy Caplan, who steals any scene she appears in and I...I...I just love her. (07/10/2016)

Sure, this script is a bit too complicated and the plot isn't actually that well-developed, maybe it's even a bit confusing in places, but still, this is exactly what I expected from the movie. It's action-packed, it's a great ride, and there are excellent tricks, whether magical or digital, that I enjoyed. I had a great time. (19/06/2016)