Review of Now You See Me (2013) by Justin Z — 11 Mar 2014

I would say this movie is absurd, but the first five minutes establish that as the name of the game so I can dig that.

On a whole, this movie is actually very entertaining. The characters are charming and the actors play their parts to the hilt. The banter is clever and very funny more often than not. The direction and pacing keeps thing fast and fun. It even manages to have one of the more impressive fight scenes I have seen in a while. All of these are great ingredients for a summer film.

Be warned though: this is NOT a deep movie. It is as light and colorful as cotton candy in terms of writing and substance. While it could have used some more depth, it is not always needed for a movie like this so I can accept that. Still, that works to both its benefit and disadvantage.

Among those disadvantages is that there are a few surprises that end up being very easy to predict a mile away. Also, as much as I like Melanie Laurent, her character and subplots contributed little to the story. The camerawork was fine throughout, but could have used a bit more visual flair to really pop.

The biggest fault of all, however, is the final five minutes. The scriptwriters attempt to be clever by pulling a twist that they must have assumed was the "least likely thing" for the audience to guess. And they're right....because it is impossible to guess! Nothing in the film hints or even vaguely implies that twist could have happened based on what had been established to that point. Also, the twist undermines a lot of things that were actually working quite well on their own plot and character wise. It was over in a flash, but the damage it did was unfortunately very noticeable.

Still, if you can swallow the boulder of a pill the movie gives you at the end, you will still find a very fun movie in this. Grab some popcorn, suspend some of your disbelief and go for the ride.