Nothing up their sleeves

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This article was published 09/06/2016 (3755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Now You See Me franchise, which deals with the sleight-of-hand shenanigans of a gang of renegade illusionists, relies on two kinds of magic — the magic of “nothing-up-my-sleeve” tricks and the magic of movies. Each kind can be wonderful on its own, but taken together, they tend to cancel each other out.

It’s hard to summon up any “How did they do that?” wonderment when Lizzy Caplan pulls a dove out of someone’s pants or Dave Franco throws a playing card that can slice through rope. We know how they did that: with cinematic special effects.

Meanwhile, the movie magic in NYSM2 is slick but sometimes perfunctory.

The story picks up a year after the so-called Four Horsemen delivered a combination send-off show and heist and then disappeared from view. Once again, we’re drawn into a world where “nothing is what it seems,” with Jack (Franco), the street-hustling card shark, Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg), the smart, fast-talking ringmaster, and Merritt (Woody Harrelson), the old guy of the group, a hypnotist who’s seen better days but can still put you in a trance with a few whispered words.

The departure of the 2013 film’s Isla Fisher is neatly explained in the first few minutes, making way for Lula (Caplan), geek-comedy magician and self-described “Girl Horseman.” (Horsewoman?)

The Horsemen are once again positioned — unconvincingly — as hipster folk heroes, with their habit of using flashy magic shows to expose corruption and shower the audience with money. But they are also working for the Eye, a shadowy secret society that may or may not exist and whose origins and motivations remain murky.

The puzzle box of a plot also includes FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), skeptical magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) and Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), the Horsemen’s billionaire backer-turned-enemy. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, rather disconcertingly grown-up) is Walter Mabry, a tech magnate who forcibly recruits the Horsemen to pull off a challenging stunt.

NYSM2 is less smug than its 2013 predecessor but still loads the dice so that everyone around the Horsemen is a nay-saying, magic-hating meanie or — in the case of law enforcement — an incompetent dolt.

Caplan feels fresh and funny, and her flirtation with Franco works much better than the original’s misfire between Fisher and Eisenberg. But the filmmakers often overestimate the charm of their heroes, especially Eisenberg, who is self-satisfied and snarky to the point of being slappable. (And no, this reaction isn’t just a holdover from his supremely irritating Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman — this character is obnoxious all on his own.)

Director Jon M. Chu (the Step Up movies) seems comfortable with the series’ preposterous setup, and he keeps things moving with his brisk, busy style. Scripter Ed Solomon, who also co-wrote the 2013 original, uses massive amounts of misdirection to cover up the essential silliness of the plot. He also relies on what could be called the Shyamalan Effect. The good news with the Shyamalan Effect is you get a surprise ending. The bad news is that everything leading up to the Big Reveal is convoluted, contrived and occasionally goofy.

Relying on “do your eyes deceive you?” cleverness, the story involves tricks and illusions, bluffs and double-bluffs, turnarounds and reverses, to the point where the unpredictable becomes weirdly predictable. Basically, you know that whatever seems to be happening probably isn’t.

One thing that’s definitely happening, though, is Now You See Me 3, which was just announced. Maybe for their next trick The Horsemen will be able to do something truly unexpected. Here they’re stuck pulling the same old rabbits out of the same old hats.