Review of Now You See Me 2 (2016) by Robert J — 08 Aug 2016

Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that truly no one asked for; the first one was mindless, but passable entertainment, and now we get a follow-up that has the Four Horsemen pretty much acting as if they are literally gods with the crap they try and pass off as believable in this film which literally made my head hurt.

I enjoyed the first film, it was a fun caper and I was able to suspend some disbelief and go along for the ride, but this one tries so hard to be clever and out-think the audience that it gets too big for its own good, a sad trend that many sequels follow.

The movie is a revenge story with the people who were screwed over by the magicians in the first film getting payback, and thus its a fairly pedestrian film, until the characters are asked to essentially become super spies and steal a highly lucrative piece of technology, which is where I drew the line.

These are MAGICIANS whose only power lies around controlling the environment they're in with nothing being left to chance, yet because they're involved in some ridiculous magician society called, The Eye, they can do unbelievable things left and right? They actually spend time explaining some of the more easily solvable magic tricks during the film, and then completely ignore the IMPOSSIBLE ones like Jesse Eisenberg disappearing in a puddle of water and an extended sequence of sleight-of-hand with a playing card that just KEPT GOING.

The cast mostly all return from the first film, with the exception of Isla Fisher who was replaced by Lizzy Caplan due to pregnancy, and they all do serviceable work, again with Mark Ruffalo being the highlight and the only character we ever get to learn anything about.

Some of the new characters are decent with Caplan serving as a capable member of the team and Daniel Radcliffe (let the Harry Potter jokes roll) playing the main antagonist well, but unfortunately not nearly as menacing as I had hoped with a third act reveal completely diminishing his character.

But there is one new player in this film that DROVE. ME. NUTS...for whatever behind-the-scenes reason, Woody Harrelson plays his exact twin in this film, also adept at magic, and I just....why?! He's completely useless in the film and his tanned, bleached teeth, and curly-haired look made me feel like I was watching Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit; not to mention he is annoying as hell.

It's a film that asks the audience to turn their brain off, but I refuse to do that in a film that's simultaneously trying to be smarter than my intelligence and after a while, I just wanted it to be over.

Not awful, but certainly not warranted and the ending makes absolutely no sense.