#NOW YOU SEE ME MOVIE#
#NOW YOU SEE ME SERIES#

#NOW YOU SEE ME SERIES#

Joined together to perform a limited series of shows for the monstrously wealthy Vegas guy Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), they soon learn that their tricks are meant for purposes other than wowing paying crowds. So, Danny does card tricks, or sleight of hand more generally, Merritt (Woody Harrelson) is a mentalist and hypnotist, Jack (Dave Franco) a pickpocket (a great magic trick, in its way), and the Girl, also called Henley (Isla Fisher) chains herself up in water tanks with piranhas, probably less of a trick than picking pockets. Danny and his cohorts form the Four Horsemen, something like the Avengers or the X Men, or any other comic book hero grouping, each member with a particular neurosis, power, and skill he or she brings to bear on the mastermind’s master scheme. Indeed, the primary consequence is that you are left to ponder how odd it is to see Jesse Eisenberg, that most non-sensational of performers, gesticulating like one a most sensational performer, a puffy, designer-dressed Vegas entrepreneur, who comes equipped with a silent, much younger, and very high-heeled female assistant (Caitriona Balfe)Įisenberg plays Daniel Atlas, one of the several youngsters gathered together by a mastermind whose identity remains more or less disguised until film’s end (less if you give the proceedings any thought as they proceed, more if you just give up and go along with the ride).

That these elements are situated amid a series of special effects deemed magic - on a stage and/or in front of audiences who ooh and ahh - is of minimal consequence.

#NOW YOU SEE ME MOVIE#

It’s really about assembling a slew of well known stars, old and young, in a story about good guys and bad guys, some caper movie components, some vaguely twisty plot turns, and a general notion of vengeance. To be fair, Now You See Me is only nominally a movie about magic. They cut between shots, they conjure special effects, they grant super powers and possibilities to an enterprise that - at its most enchanting and most endearing - is all about non-superness, about ordinary, non-special means to extraordinary, special-seeming effects. In movies about magic, that question is typically undone by definition, because movies, by definition, cheat. The beauty of magic, the appeal and the thrill, is precisely the how. “How did you do that?” This might be the question most frequently asked of magicians, and the answer is rarely forthcoming.

Now you see me