Could this Second Act also be magic?
|||NOW YOU SEE ME: THE SECOND ACT
DIRECTOR: Jon M Chu
CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Danielle Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine
CLASSIFICATION: 7-9 PG
RUNNING TIME: 129 minutes
RATING: 2 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
THIS unnecessary sequel to a very fun movie about the magic of magic just completely subverts itself. It takes the good idea from the first film and hits you over the head with its sequelitis.
Wildly energetic, the film is overplotted and way too calculated, and it never gives any of its usually charming and engaging actors a chance to really get to grips with their characters.
It repeats the basic storyline of the first film – the four Horsemen come together to plan a huge magic trick so as to expose a nefarious businessman and delight the cellphone-wielding public with some spectacular visuals. You know this is going to be a crime caper with lots of misdirection, but this time around you are too wise to the Horsemen’s ways to be surprised.
Pregnant (at the time of filming) Isla Fisher does not return as Henley and the fourth Horseman is instead replaced by the annoying Lula (Caplan) who talks a lot, but says little.
She is brought into the team by FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) who is soon publicly outed as the son of erstwhile master magician, Lionel Shrike (who is constantly referenced in this film, so if you haven’t seen the first, do yourself a favour and rather hire that dvd).
Off the Horsemen are whisked to Macau by some hitherto unknown criminal mastermind – Radcliffe popping up as a bonkers little ponce – who wants them to steal something particularly unstealable.
Harrelson is creepy as his own character’s twin brother so you get a double dose of him, while Eisenberg easily reprises his egocentric Daniel Atlas character and Franco is as beautiful as ever.
The bonhomie and delight in magic from the first film made me very predisposed to like this one and I was really rooting for it, but it just underestimates the audience’s intelligence and overestimates how long you can flog the same idea. It is totally possible for a film without any substance to still entertain, but this one gives you more of the same.
While the actual heist sequences are wonderfully choreographed to a T, using misdirection, sleight of hand and verbal chicanery to exacting effect, this just heightens the effect that it is all so artificial.
The first film was riddled with actors addressing the audience, asking, “can you guess what is going on?”, and then showing you how wrong you were. But, by this second film, that particular trick is so overused that we know we are being duped and therefore see what is coming from a mile off.
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