Now You See Me

To start, remember to vote in the User Poll on the right side of your screen! It only takes a quick second. Also, you might notice a new tab called "Best of RR" on the main page. This tab will put all of my favorite movies that I have reviewed together (all of them with an 8/10 RRS or higher) in case you are looking for a good movie but dont want to slog through all of the other reviews to find one. Lastly, I will now be discussing the Cons before the Pros in order to make the posts a little more positive! No one likes a Negative Nancy critic! Thanks to my friends Chris and Felipe for these suggestions! Onward to the review...

Now You See Me's tagline is: "The closer you look, the less you'll see". Taking a step back and not looking so closely, I'll tell you exactly what I see: a movie that thinks it's a lot smarter than it really is. 

Now You See Me is a story about four magicians that are mysteriously grouped up and they pull off these "incredible" magic tricks that basically steal rich people's money and give it to the less fortunate. I put "incredible" in quotations because I really just dont dig magic movies. Other than Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, but that was a movie more focused on the story than the magic itself. I just find magic incredibly hard to be exciting in a movie. There is no promise that what they are doing on screen isn't some camera trick or use of CGI (which this movie does several times). I love magic when it is on TV or live audience, but when it's on the silver screen it tends to lose it's..."magic". 

The Four Horseman. Dibs on Isla Fisher

While the movie may lack the impressiveness of a live magic show, it really is pretty entertaining for most of its almost-2-hour run time. There are some humorous exchanges between characters and the heist jobs are interesting to see how they were pulled of; something the movie does very well is explaining the details of the tricks. I also really enjoyed the impressive cast and thought that they helped to make it a much better movie than it should have been. All of them are pretty one dimensional, but that seems somewhat forgivable for a movie who's plot isn't really focused on its characters at all. 

As cool as Mark Ruffalo was in The Avengers, 
he is a little bit less awesome in this movie

And that paragraph is about all the nice things I have to say about Now You See Me. Most of the movie is just very average and by the time the summer is all said and done, you won't be remembering this one. To me it just screams that it is the type of movie that three years from now you will be watching it on some TV channel because you are bored and have nothing else to do. It will entertain you, but you probably wont remember it a day later. Going into the movie I didn't really expect anything less than this, but it is a tad disappointing considering the talented cast that the creators were able to assemble. 

"Can I have some of that?"
"No! This is My Cocaine!"

It's OK, Isla! At least you aren't average in
the new season of Arrested Development!

Compliments and average-ness aside, I did have one really big issue with the movie. For starters, it comes across as a pompous prick. It makes fun of characters on screen that can't figure out the magician's tricks and as an audience member I couldn't figure them out either, therefore leading me to feel like I was being made fun of. But that's okay. I figured that it would at least have a smart ending that explained everything and made me go "A-ha!". Nope. Now You See Me features what might be one of THE stupidest twists I have ever seen in a movie. It completely undercuts the earlier portions of the film, is highly unbelievable, and comes entirely out of left field. The movie attempts to explain it, and I suppose that they do, but there are also several things left unexplained by the end. For a movie that thinks it is so damn smart it sure makes a pretty stupid play at the end. I also wasn't really believing the love story that they tried to incorporate either. It too seems to come out of nowhere and there is absolutely no chemistry between its two parties. By the time it's all said and done it just feels like there was this massive twist and a love story just for the sake of having a massive twist and a love story. 

Now You See Me comes out during a relatively busy summer and that will do nothing but hurt it in the long run. Did I enjoy myself? Yes. Other than the idiotic twist it was a decent way to kill a couple of hours and you can certainly do much worse than this movie (such as After Earth apparently). But once we get some more huge movies in the next couple of weeks, I'm not sure if I will remember this movie at all. That is until I see it on TV years later. 

The closer you look, the more average of a movie you'll see.

Cons:

• While it was entertaining for most of the run time, it wasn't that entertaining. The story, action, laughs, and CGI are all only slightly above average
• Unnecessary love story that serves no higher purpose
• Magic movies generally dont entice me that much; I find it really hard to be interested when it's clearly a fake trick
• That plot twist is atrocious. At least for me, it's one of the worst I have ever seen
• Some things are left completely unexplained. For example, what is "The Eye" all about and what happens once you are in it?

Pros:

• Despite it being a magic movie, Now You See Me does a better job than most at making the magic performances exciting
• Some cool action and funny jokes are sprinkled throughout
• The plot holds you attention for most of the movie and I was interested to see how they pulled it off
• The movie explains many of the details of the tricks very well
• Great cast that significantly holds the movie up

Rath's Review Score: 5/10