Now You See Me: Now You Don’t pulls the ultimate illusion: tricking me into hoping that this third entry would be better than the last two.
Tedious and offensively stupid in a sleight-of-hand way that some audience members will be fooled by, Now You See Me 3 coasts thanks to another breezy adventure/heist plot and bunch of amusing(ly annoying) characters that, when packaged together, may appear to pull mindless entertainment out of its hat.
The problem with this latest Now You See Me movie is, like the last two, it thinks it is smarter than it is—or is at least content trying to convince the audience that it is. It’s Ocean’s 11 but with a lamer script, a nonsensical plot, and heists that only make sense with the help of cheap CGI (same could be said for the last two).
After an opening sequence that is halfway decent, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t returns to its same bag of tired tricks. It may have had a chance had the movie stuck with its three new young magicians, but soon enough the original Four (Five?) Horsemen are reunited and bickering and bantering with a smirk as if this is a legacy sequel audiences were screaming for. The originals—Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, Dave Franco—all seem to know they don’t have to try very hard, with them simultaneously delivering groan-worthy dialogue being fed to them by earpieces. Their characters weren’t very good back when the OG was released—many years later, they are sad, obnoxiously flaccid empty vessels.
To be fair, the newcomers aren’t much better.
But the acting isn’t the issue. The direction and writing is so uninterested in striving for quality that the whole movie operates on the conceit that if something doesn’t fit together well, glue it together with a CGI magic trick. For a franchise so centered on magic, it’s incredible how little it cares about presenting stage magic in a practical way. Whereas the Ocean’s 11 heist makes perfect sense, nothing that happens here is explained with any credence to convincing the audience “oh I see how that could actually work.”
It may not matter that much to less discerning viewers, but it’s lazy as f**k. And offensively stupid.
Now You See Me 3’s sole highlight, but perhaps also its greatest sin, is that it wastes a solid Bond villain performance from Rosamund Pike (who I realize was already a Bond villain), who sneers with her Afrikaans accent while running circles around the other actors on screen. She’s great, even if the screenplay does her no favors.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t offers a baseline level of entertainment value, but you really, really have to check your brain at the door. I don’t like magic tricks that require me to try so very hard to not call bullshit.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
