Now You See Me 2
Summit Entertainment
Directed by: Jon M. Chu
Written by: Ed Solomon & Pete Chiarelli
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson
The Trailer:
YouTube Video Review (Spoiler Free):
The Good:
Let’s start off with the characters. Woody Harrelson was funny given his “interesting” role in the movie. It was nice to see more of Mark Ruffalo’s character and his past. It would appear that Ruffalo had a few similar highlights in this film similar to how Dave Franco did in the last Now You See Me. (Remember when Dave Franco had that cool magic fight scene in the last film?) With Isla Fisher (who played “Henley”) not present in this film, Lizzy Caplan stepped in without missing a beat. She was both entertaining and humorous.
The biggest highlight will probably be the “Security scene” as it was the most suspenseful scene of the entire film. (You’ll know it when you see it.) The first 2/3’s of the movie is overall really good.
The Bad:
The story seems to have one too many forced twists the closer you get to the end. The more plot twists that were revealed, the more convoluted the story became. I was a little disappointed because the original mystery that made the story so compelling seemed to unravel rather hastily. When it came to the magic tricks, they simply didn’t seem to be as grand as the last movie’s tricks.
With all of the reveals of how the many tricks were done, a lot of the allure seemed to disappear. I also think that the marketing may have failed this film a bit too. The trailers, and even movie posters, all appeared to give away a major reveal that the movie tried to make a big deal; that includes some of the magic tricks or characters.
The Reason:
In all honesty, I can’t say that this sequel lives up to the previous movie. However, it’s a rather difficult task to exceed that surprise factor that Now You See Me pt 1 came in with. As you can probably tell in my previous Now You See Me review, I was very impressed with the previous movie. (Probably more so than others) Interestingly enough, news has been reported that the movie studios have already started working on Now You See Me 3. So maybe, just maybe, there’s hope that Now You See Me 2 was just a bridge film, and there’s room for more improvement down the road. Either way, I still think that this movie was entertaining and fun to watch. It’s worth your time to see it in the theaters.
