Review of Now You See Me 2 (2016) by Jessica F — 24 Jul 2016

"Now You See Me" became an unexpected hit due to its mixture of "Ocean´s Eleven" and "The Prestige", so it was a matter of time for a sequel to be released, but this sequel has a change of director, new faces showing up and jumps on the new Hollywood trend of pandering Chinese audiences. Does this means this sequel is an improvement?

After the events of the last film, the Horsemen have gone their different ways, but the paths of three of them will cross again as they are required to come out of the shadows along with a new member. But in their first heist they are outsmarted by a new player who will turn their lives upside down.

If you have read my review of the first film you know that I didn't like it at all, so I wasn't excited to watch its sequel but after seeing it I have to admit it was t as bad as I expected. "Now You See Me 2" (seriously, why isn't this named 'Now You Don't'?) counts with the same level of acting than last time plus adding a peculiar performance by Daniel Radcliffe (on a side note: Seriously Daniel? You want to escape the Harry Potter image but you decide to be in a film about modern magicians? Not a good plan), the new director mimics what was made before but he shows that he has a good eye in capturing movement, the characters are as one dimensional as in its predecessor, it is friendly to newcomers thanks to its "Rocky" like summary of the previous film, and overall it is almost identical to the first film. The key difference between the first film and its sequel its, ironically, the writing. Last time they tried so hard to outsmart audiences that the story became unbelievable due to its ludicrous reveals (to the point of being laughable) and its contradictory stance regarding the magic itself, but in this film the writer became aware of the dumb premise so he just rolled with it. Granted the story goes to typical sequel territory and it is far more predictable than last time (thankfully there are not as many ludicrous reveals in this one) but it doesn't try to be smarter than it is so it's easier to go along and enjoy this mindless film, plus the addition of Lizzy Caplan's character injects new energy to the film.

"Now You See Me 2" is as dumb and average as its predecessor but it is more enjoyable as it knows what it's capable of and doesn't tries to be smart. Mindless fun that knows its limits but it's the same quality.