A lot of tricks, but not enough magic.
“We vanished for a while, but in the world of magic, everything that disappears reappears, at least if the trick is done right,” says Jesse Eisenberg’s J. Daniel Atlas. It’s been 9 years since we got the crappy sequel “Now You See Me 2,” but we now have the threequel with the subtitle: “Now You Don’t.” This one brings back the famous illusionists-the Four Horsemen, which consists of Atlas, Woody Harrelson’s Merritt McKinney, Dave Franco’s Jack Wilder, and Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves (and you know she couldn’t do the second movie due to her pregnancy). But since the illusionists have their Beatles break up, their acts are now projected by a new team of youngsters, which now consist of Justice Smith as Charlie, Dominic Sessa (“The Holdovers”) as Bosco, and Ariana Greenblatt as June.
This one is a slight improvement on the last film because it features some impressive tricks and special effects, but it’s not saying much considering that they start to run out of magic. It seems to be spending too much time on them, and not enough on the levity and character development this franchise should have. A-list stars, new missions, and twists and turns are very common in movie franchises like “Fast & Furious” and “Knives Out,” and we can sense when something is bound to happen. Sometimes, it can predictable, and other times it can be daring. But we’ll save the good stuff in my upcoming review of “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
Atlas is amazed and a little insulted by Charlie, Bosco, and June’s magic tricks, and he enlists them for a new heist. It regards a diamond known as “The Heart Jewel,” which must be more valuable than the Pink Panther diamond, deadly if swallowed, and owned by the conniving German businesswoman Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike). This is when McKinney, Wilder, and Reeves come back in the saddle. Although I’m not really learning much about why they broke up in the first place.
There’s a house that seems like it would make a great escape room. You can start with the puzzle door which June can open faster than Wilder (the trailer spoiled that trick, not me). One room has optical illusion, one hallway can be upside down and right side up at the same time, and one place has mirrors and stairs almost like something out of M.C. Escher. This is when they reunite with the former magician Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) and this place makes an ideal fight against the police.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” now directed by Ruben Fleisher, has some likability in the new young magicians thanks to the performances from Sessa, Smith, and Greenblatt (who seems to be apologizing to us for her awful performance in “Borderlands”). It might be a generation thing (and McKinney does comment on it sometimes), and maybe that’s what this sequel wanted to go for. Two generations colliding into a new set of Horsemen.
One of my complaints about the last entry was Lizzy Caplan as Lula May, the replacement for Reeves, being annoying and inconsistent. And the film decides to bring her back, but in a less annoying way, but even she isn’t the real reason why I can’t recommend “Now You Don’t.” It’s the way it loves magic tricks more than the character development, which comes and goes. It’s too fast for me to keep up with it, and it lasts under two hours.
It’s said that “diamonds are forever,” but even some diamonds aren’t all that shiny. And I don’t think the Heart Jewel looks that valuable. I think it’s the principle of the heist that’s more entertaining, which is too bad. I’m now going to make this review disappear.
