The original NOW YOU SEE ME was an entertain diversion. It worked like a David Copperfield special. Preying upon the spectacle of illusion with the entertaining banter to carry it off like a story production. It has incredibly charismatic actors. I love Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Right? And Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Radcliffe would surely be welcome editions for this new one right?
Basically. NOW YOU SEE ME 2 isn’t out and out painful. That list of talent… you kidding me, they definitely carry one’s attention, but this film packed zero satisfaction for me. The… TRICK, that was decided to implement that would make this sequel fresh… different from the last… When the four Horseman (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Lizzy Caplan!!!) attempt to pull one of those righteous magical Robin Hood acts… They would get ambushed and then tricked themselves by an enemy who would basically be like if they made a Simpsons Movie that was a whole series of elaborate Nelson doing an “AAAAHHHHHHAAAAA” gag on Bart Simpson trying to be smooth gags… That after 4 or 5 of these things there’d be a glib, “Nice try, Nelson” followed by an “AWWWWW MANNNNN!”
I never really liked PUNKD. It’s not my vibe. I don’t gain pleasure from the misery of others… unless it’s a really cool fantasy, sci-fi, horror, epic, animated, film that actually pulls it off.
I watched the expanded edition of NOW YOU SEE ME the night before. Seeing if it would fire me up for the screening I had the next night. I liked the presentation and the banter. But in the original film, I never liked Michael Caine being tricked, because… frankly… fuck everyone but Michael Caine, he’s cooler than anyone else in the film. And I fucking grew up in the seventies watching Morgan Freeman teach me life shit on damn Sesame Street. But Michael Caine was HARRY Palmer. HARRY Palmer. HARRY. It was a big cinematic deal that he was that kind of smart badass. Positive reinforcement. As a kid, it just worked that simple and as an adult, I recognize that fact.
Anyway, Daniel Radcliffe is Nelson. Michael Caine is his miserable Father that doesn’t regularly claim him, but if it fucks these fucks, why the fuck not. And that’s a miserable character for Michael Caine. There really isn’t a great deal of happy in this film. These aren’t so much magic tricks as elaborate cons and setups. The Thames audience set up, ultimately felt a bit ridiculous and like I said, Michael Caine losing isn’t ever satisfying for me.
More than that though, nobody really felt satisfied throughout the whole thing. There’s this whole false hope for a real super doozy of a holy wow, that just never materializes. And is again, more dissatisfaction. Sure we get a somewhat kind of satisfying, secondary satisfying kind of ending, but it isn’t MAGIC.
Saying Binaural Beats and Hypnosis just wound up feeling a tad silly within their established universe – for me. It just made our “heroes” feel more gullible than I would like to think of our 4-5 -6 horsemen…
Like I said, it isn’t outwardly painful, it’s just a series of quality scenes that ultimately never reach a satisfying conclusion. Ending on downbeats instead of upbeats making a syncopation that just didn’t jive.
And I hate that because I fucking love Ed Solomon, the screenwriter – and I love these actors. But it just left me wishing everything had gone better and more fun for everyone involved. They all worked too hard and didn’t have enough self-confidence. In short, this was a bit of a bad trip.
The film always looks good and there’s cleverness throughout, I just didn’t find it nearly as satisfying as the first film, and that wasn’t really a holy shitter of a highmark. As a result it felt unnecessary. And that blows. Maybe you’ll have a better time. I guess, I always root for the Magician and the Audience to have an honest connection of wow. Here, the wow kept trying to shift and twist and shout.
When you have the group practicing and in the zone of their tricks, the film is most satisfying, once that gets unraveled, less so. My wife might like this one more though. She didn’t come to see it with me, but she kind of fucking hates real life magicians cuz it’s all about being smarter than the rest of us and fooling us into being stupid fools for their wily tricks and illusions. So somebody preying on them might be satisfying for her in a DEXTER killing Serial Killers kinda way… But there’s never anything nearly as satisfying as a great DEXTER episode about NOW YOU SEE ME 2.
Like I said, I take no satisfaction in reporting my feelings about the film. I like everyone involved and it generally works, it’s just anticlimactic as fuck. Like when you’re typing pretty fucking good in typing class, and you look down to look at your fingers communicating your thoughts with perfect proficiency and the Typing teacher slaps your hands to remind you to keep your eyes on the reference paper at all times… not understanding that I knew what the paper said and I was fascinated by the Busby Berkeley musicalness to being genuinely good at typing.
That wasn’t fun. And it was abusive, but that was being a kid in a small town typing class. She also cut my bleached blonde rat tale in class and made a deal out of it. BULLIES just suck and this is a movie about peacock bullies that ain’t all that great. Maybe it was just the idea of Daniel Radcliffe being a magical Moriarty – and ultimately they never really went there. That could have been cool, but they spazzed the character.
The first film was magician’s pranking prickish corporate vultures of society. This time, it was the Corporate Vultures exacting revenge, that’s notably less satisfying if you ask me.
Yeah, I supported Bernie Sanders – and I’ll vote Hillary Clinton, and hope she takes on enough of his platforms ambitions to make it worth while. See, I’m an optimist. Or maybe you think I’m insane. That’s your prerogative. You maybe be right, but maybe not. I mean, the first Jewish President, especially with the disappointment that Obama isn’t Muslim, I mean that would at least be more interesting. You know, NOW YOU SEE ME 2 is as least as less shocking about the normalcy of Obama’s presidency. He kinda did what he said he’d do. It’s more like witnessing the Bush years. I took no satisfaction with what I saw happening. I want the country to succeed. I want the heroes to win magnificently. It needs to feel like a great JOURNEY song. That’s good magic.
This was Yanni magic. You don’t wanna pay for that shit.
Keep it cool,
Harry
