Now You See Me

"Now You See Me" starts out with great potential as a surprise sleeper hit of the Summer movie season but unfortunately doesn't have quite enough follow through to make it anything other than just a very "ok" movie.

"Now You See Me" can best be described as "Ocean's 11 meets The Italian Job with Magicians". The story is about 4 B-level magicians who are mysteriously brought together to perform what becomes the biggest magic act in Las Vegas. The final act at one of their shows is to rob a random audience members bank. This "trick" is a success and soon the police become involved and are hot on the trail of the 4 magicians as the try and complete the trifecta of huge robberies.

The cast here is almost a dream, no huge stars but a plethora of solid actors. Included are Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Woody Harrelson (The People VS. Larry Flynt), Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers), Dave Franco (James's brother), Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), Morgan Freeman (every other movie since 1992), Michael Caine (The Dark Knight trilogy) and the GORGEOUS Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds). The basic storyline and the cast were the two major selling points for me to see this movie, unfortunately the movie suffers from a longer than needed running time and is inconsistent for the majority of its nearly two hour running time other than a very good 35-40 minutes towards the middle of the picture and standout performances from Ruffalo and Laurent.

The main problem with "Now You See Me" is that if you are like me you go in expecting to see a movie about these magicians who rob banks, but in reality the movie is about Ruffalo's detective character on the pursuit. Ruffalo again is outstanding but segments of the movie go on with no magicians and when they did finally show up again I had honestly forgotten about them. When they are on screen they are mostly doing stage performances and the dialogue is almost entirely ADR (additional dialogue recorded) this is disheartening especially as a fan of Eisenberg, who really seems out of his element here and Harrleson who as the teams mentalist has some of the biggest laughs but again just underused. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine show up basically playing versions of other characters that they have played in superior movies, Freeman genuinely seems to be having fun with his role but it appears this was strictly a paycheck role for Caine who himself was in one of the better movies about magicians "The Prestige".

Five screenwriters are credited with "Now You See Me" which is even more evidence that the parties involved here couldn't decide which direction they wanted to take the movie. Too many times you are lead to just assume "well its magic so I wont ask questions" which in turn is discrediting to your audience, sure there are moments where things happened that even surprised me but the moments of eye rolling were equal if not surpassed. French director Louis Letterier has made a few big budget Hollywood films before but he is better suited for movies with more explosions than is what offered here, movies about magicians such as the aforementioned "The Prestige" and "The Illusionist" are prime examples of this, "Now You See Me" could have benefited with a director with visual flare and storytelling abilities, Barry Sonnenfeld would have been my choice.

I thought "Now You See Me" would be an interesting change for the normal Summer movie selection, the idea is original and it is nice to see non blockbuster actors get blockbuster work overall this movie was a disappointment with a few bright spots mixed in.