Wouldn’t Ocean’s Eleven have been vastly improved if its heroes weren’t suave gentlemen thieves, but the smuggest twerps on the planet? That was presumably the thought behind the dire 2013 magicians-do-globe-trotting-heists thriller Now You See Me and its marginally less awful 2016 sequel – and those films’ fans, who presumably exist since both made a fortune, will be pleased to hear this formula has not been tweaked for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco return as the Four Horsemen: a quartet of wildly unlikeable egomaniacs/former Las Vegas performers who righteously steal from the rich on behalf of a secretive Magic Circle-like clique. After a lengthy absence the Horsemen are pressed back into service by three Gen-Z admirers (Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt and Justice Smith) – and soon, all are trying to liberate the ill-gotten billions of Rosamund Pike’s South African diamond baroness.
Pike’s preposterous accent is as close as the film ever comes to acknowledging its own premise’s inherent corniness. “I hate magic – the camp, the cheese,” she hisses in one of her regular villainous asides, but both qualities are in depressingly short supply here.
Instead, as before, there’s an onslaught of too-cool-for-school posturing, which hits its nadir in the smirk-laden “magical jam sessions” where the seven illusionists (later eight, with the return of the second film’s Lizzy Caplan) vie to out-amaze one another with tricks and stunts.
In this sequel, the “Four Horsemen” illusionists—played by Eisenberg, Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher (who returns after not appearing in the second film)—team up with a new generation of magicians for a high-stakes diamond heist. The cast also features returning actors Morgan Freeman and Mark Ruffalo (in a cameo via hologram) and new additions such as Rosamund Pike and Dominic Sessa.