It’s hard to do magic on film. Cinema manipulates; it cuts, cheats, and obfuscates. Who cares if you made a coin or a card or a car vanish onscreen? Shit disappears all the time in the movies. The films that manage to handle magic well either fully embrace their own artificiality (think Nightmare Alley or Santa Sangre) or delight in exposing the machinery of how the tricks work (think The Prestige). The ones that fail wind up somewhere precariously in between, convinced that piling extra layers of disbelief atop our already suspended disbelief will suffice to enchant us. Unfortunately, this results in tedium, annoyance, sometimes even rage; there are few things more infuriating than a movie about magic that has no magic in it.
The most egregious of these offenders is now back with a third installment. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t continues the adventures of the Horsemen, a group of socially conscious magicians whose wild, popular shows double as heists during which they steal and/or undermine the sinister efforts of the rich and powerful and spread their bounty to an adoring public. What could be more fun than some abracadabra and cathartic wealth redistribution? “Wars, pandemics, climate change, AI … Let’s face it, we all need magic more than ever,” we’re told early on in this new one, and it would have been a nice thought had the movie delivered. These are supposed to be both magician movies and heist movies, with a bit of humor and sweep and romance thrown in. But in truth they’re just wannabe-superhero movies, turning their heroes not into master illusionists and tricksters but people who possess what appear to be special powers: wizards. Hypnotist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson, presumably taking time off from filming AI commercials) isn’t just a guy who has mastered the art of using his voice to lull people into waking slumber; he’s a guy who can instantaneously turn his victims into willing zombies. When Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) throws cards, he might as well be throwing heat-seeking missiles; they bank around corners and everything.
It’s been nearly a decade since Now You See Me 2, so this third film serves as a semi-legacyquel (a legasemiquel?), bringing back the old team (who have since gone their separate ways) while also introducing several younger illusionists. We first meet this new crew as they pretend to be their forebears: The film opens with a big show in which the Horsemen make off with a bloviating crypto bro’s digital wallet, only for it to turn out that we’ve been watching a doctored projection of our original heroes, with young hustler Bosco Leroy (The Holdovers sensation Dominic Sessa) imitating their voices while whiz kid Charlie (Justice Smith) and pickpocket June (Ariana Greenblatt) coordinate the actual thievery.
Quite quickly, however, these young guns are confronted by J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), the ringleader of the original Horsemen, and in due course the other old-timers — McKinney, Wilder, and escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) — also show up, apparently summoned to the new kids’ lair by a series of mysterious cards, the preferred method of communication for the Eye, the shadowy global network that once guided our paranormal Robin Hoods. And once again, their quarry is a ripped-from-the-headlines sleazebag: Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), a criminal South African socialite and diamond magnate.
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The pieces are in place — detestable villain, likable cast — but Now You Don’t can’t muster up the energy or the wit to make us care one lick about what’s happening onscreen. There’s a basic disconnect here. We marvel at magic tricks (both the tricks themselves and their explanations) because we marvel at humans being able to achieve such remarkable feats. But these films make a mockery of that idea. In the Now You See Me movies, the so-called explanations for the big tricks are even more ridiculous than the tricks themselves; they’re not built on the characters’ skill or determination or cleverness, but on narrative convenience and screenwriter contrivance. These films are anti-magic: They quash the wonder of both a perfectly executed trick and its oh wow reveal. (This also makes them bad heist movies, by the way.)
Still, this latest entry isn’t quite as offensive as previous efforts, partly because director Ruben Fleischer brings slightly more visual punch to the action, and the classically anxious Eisenberg has settled in nicely into his role as the awkwardly egomaniacal Atlas. We don’t entirely buy all the other characters’ admonitions of Atlas as a “dick” (he’s still basically Jesse Eisenberg, a fundamentally inescapable persona), but he demonstrates just enough self-regard that we’re curious about what he might say or do next. And Sessa, who with his ragged charm still looks like he’s teleported in from a different decade of American cinema, matches him sneer for sneer. The newcomers, Smith and Greenblatt, comport themselves well; the veterans, however, look like they’re listening for the notification telling them their checks have cleared. (Franco in particular offers up the same droning What-am-I-doing-here line delivery he brought to the recent Regretting You.) The other newcomer, Pike, always an alluring presence, gives Vanderberg a South African accent so ridiculous it fits right in alongside the film’s other absurdities.
But there’s a reason this movie exists. The previous films were hits. They have fans. They might even have superfans. Perhaps, for these viewers, the inherent stupidity of these pictures is part of their appeal. Squint hard and you can sense a certain kinship with the Fast & Furious series, even though those movies at their best have a bravado these films have never achieved. Still, in a world where wannabe blockbusters lard themselves up with so much portent and lore, maybe a silly movie that doesn’t even care if it’s any good is the ultimate act of rebellion. Everyone knows there’s no “fuck you” in “Hocus-pocus.” What the Now You See Me films presuppose is, maybe there is.
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