NOW YOU SEE ME 2 (Jon M. Chu). 129 minutes. Opens Friday (June 10). See listing. Rating: NNN
I don’t know if Now You See Me 2 is a better movie than Now You See Me, but I definitely enjoyed it more.
The first time around, I bought into the idea that there was another level to all the stunts and trickery employed by the crafty stage magicians who call themselves the Horsemen, so I was disappointed when the big climax turned out to be little more than a goofy shrug.
I was maybe also let down by the project’s utter waste of its amazing all-star cast, including Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.
The sequel works the same way, with returning screenwriter Ed Solomon and new director Jon M. Chu doing a lot of hand-waving to replace the absent Isla Fisher with the much more invested Lizzy Caplan and give the Horsemen a new enemy in Daniel Radcliffe’s string-pulling techno-wizard.
The plot riffs on Ocean’s 12, with our heroes forced to pull an impossible heist at the behest of the new baddie, but that’s just an excuse for more of the same: antic chases and last-minute escapes, impossible card tricks, unexpected reversals of allegiance and a big finale that makes no sense whatsoever but sure does have a lot of strobe lights.
It’s just empty calories, but this time I knew not to expect anything. Perhaps that’s the trick.
