Movie Review: Now You See Me 2

As The Prestige taught us, the second act of any magic trick is called ‘The Turn’. And that is precisely what you should do, away from Jon M. Chu’s Now You See Me 2.

In the follow-up to 2013’s inexplicable box office hit Now You See Me, actors you love return to have their talents squandered, mugging in vain while an unintelligible tale of magical mind-freakery and vengeful card-flickery plays out. This time, spunky franchise newcomers Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Radcliffe, Sanaa Lathan and Jay Chou are sucked into its vortex of dumb. There are no survivors.

Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Caplan (replacing Isla Fisher) play ‘the Horsemen’ – Danny, Merritt, Jack and Lula - internationally renowned magician-fugitives who surprise unsuspecting audiences with pop-up morality lectures peppered with witchcraft. (Don’t tell me their illusions are executable in reality, even with a limitless bank balance. They are straight-up wizards, or else none of this works.)

In the last film, they exposed corrupt businessman Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) and framed pesky debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) for stealing Tressler’s ill-gotten cash. Turned out the Horsemen’s strings were being pulled by the FBI agent on their tail, covert prestidigitator Dylan Rhodes (three-time Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo, apparently not ‘too good’ for this series yet). It was a ‘twist’ because it made zero sense and no reasonable person would have guessed it.

This time, while disrupting an ethically-dubious tech company’s product launch in New York, they’re spirited away to China; both an incredible illusion and a baldly transparent attempt by the filmmakers to appeal to the booming Asian market. At least it's a pretty backdrop.

As is revealed, the foursome was hypnotised, drugged and transported to Macao by Merritt’s twin brother, also played by Harrelson, in a bronze tan and curly McConaughey wig, to match the nuance of his performance. There, the Horseman meet the man behind the convoluted kidnapping - Radcliffe’s spurned investor Walter Mabry – and instructed to heist a technological trinket for him, or face death. Ticket-holders pray they’ll take the easy way out.

Little else of consequence happens, and even describing the above as ‘of consequence’ feels like a stretch. Ed Solomon’s script is, without any brief exception, complete nonsense, only occasionally revived by the vivacious, overqualified cast.

Chu, replacing Louis Letterier from the original, seems like a sensible hire, given his expertise in fleet-footed dance flicks (two Step Ups; one Justin Bieber vanity project). You'd think he could breathe life into the sleight-of-hand set pieces, or the bit where Ruffalo fights Chinese gangsters by fooling them into walking into panes of glass, but no. Just like Letterier – who’s no slouch – he has been bested by the insurmountable task of making magic appear cool. What passes for action sequences here (characters flicking cards at one another; surprise hypnotisms) are clumsily staged, though enthusiastically portrayed.

The Now You See Me franchise’s biggest misstep, however, is its reliance on tricks and illusions that are flagrantly impossible, and a smug assumption of the viewer’s idiocy. Whatever delight someone might get from watching magic unfold before them in real life comes from seeing something that defies belief, knowing that it must be possible, somehow.

NYSM2 gives us a barrage of cheats: Eisenberg dissolves into rain; Caplan is decapitated; Franco’s playing cards fly. Should we be impressed? Were we meant to think that the actors on screen were actually tangible and in the same room as us? Are we meant to say ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at what is clearly CGI? It’d be like leaving Jurassic Park and exclaiming, “Can you believe Spielberg brought all those dinosaurs to life?”

Caine once said he never saw Jaws: The Revenge (one of his most inglorious efforts), but he saw the house it paid for. Here’s hoping the NYSM series is funding the refurbishments on the now 30-year-old abode. Same goes for his co-stars and their residences. Someone should get something out of this.

2/5

In cinemas now. Rated M for violence.