Movie Review, Day 4: "Now You See Me"

Day 4

Movie: "Now You See Me"
Ticket Price: $8.75
Showtime: 12:35 pm
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Seeing is believing...or is it???

"Now You See Me" intrigued me upon viewing the trailer. A movie about magic in 2013? COOL! As a kid, I always wanted to learn magic tricks but got discouraged when I could never do them. I grew up watching "Magic's Biggest Secrets Revealed" with host Mitch Pileggi (SWOON); I realized that magic was fake and brushed it aside as nothing important and became a cynical hermit in the process.

In this movie, four completely separate street magicians are brought together to form what is call The Four Horsemen. Together, these four individuals (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher) were given instructions by an unknown leader to use magic to rob banks and financially destroy certain rich people in a sort of Robin Hood fashion. Along the way, a former magician turned debunker (Morgan Freeman) has made it his life's goal to expose magic's biggest tricks for his own personal gain. An FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) and an Interpol agent (Mélanie Laurent) try to piece together how these robberies are taking place using logic and a bit of faith.

A crime-thriller about magicians robbing banks sounds pretty interesting, right? Well, not so much. The director executed poor pacing during the film. There was also a lack of connection and depth into any of the characters other than the fact that they were all magicians at one point or another. Also, the camera just kept moving and moving and circling and circling and other awful vomitous movements. Spinning camera work and us = NO NO. Too many flashing lights and ill attempts at illusions, in my opinion. It's also not a very well-written story, either. The ending feels tacked on and I saw it coming. It was a cop-out ending and explanation that made very little sense. It's not the fault of the actors, it's the fault of the writer and director. The story is what suffers here.

I went into "The Hangover Part 3" with very low expectations that were exceed; I went into "Now You See Me" with higher expectations that just weren't met. Most of the actors in the film I enjoy in their other work, but I just didn't really care for this movie. The most compelling character was played by Morgan Freeman...but then again, he could read the phone book and I'd watch it in awe.

My rating: 5/10

Josh's rating: 5/10

IMDB's rating: 7.4/10

Do we recommend the movie: Not really. Other might find the film enjoyable, but we were pretty critical of it. The ending was trying to be a "jaw-dropper" and we just rolled our eyes.