Now You See Me: Now You Don’t

The Now You See Me franchise has always been a little improbable. That it could even span an entire franchise with its odd premise — what if magicians but also heists? — seems unlikely enough. The first two films, released in 2013 and 2016, got by with incorrigible, goofy charm, playing like kids’ films for adults: sprawling adventures in the manner of The Mummy or National Treasure, a PG concoction of undemanding, studio-mandated peril and cheap jokes that could easily occupy your time, if repeated on ITV2 one rainy evening.

Now, nearly a decade on from the last film, the Four Horsemen — whose numbers now swell to five or even eight, depending on how you're counting — are back. “Everything that disappears, reappears,” as Jesse Eisenberg’s J. Daniel Atlas notes, somewhat inaccurately. True to his word, Atlas and his super-pals return — including pork-pie-hat-wearing hypnotist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), assistant-turned-escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and sleight-of-hand trickster Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), dispatching baddies with well-thrown cards, à la Gambit.

The Horsemen’s illusions have never had much of a relationship with reality, but this time around they feel particularly egregious.

Given how long it’s been since the last entry, some fresh blood is injected in the form of three Gen-Z magicians, played by up-and-comers Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt and The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa. They must all take on Rosamund Pike’s Marie Antoinette fangirl Veronika Vanderberg, a diamond heiress with a rich-sounding name and an amusingly over-the-top accent, for which apologies must surely be sent to the people of South Africa (Pike seems to be channelling her early experience as a Bond villain in Die Another Day).

All the Now You See Me films require a certain suspension of disbelief, a willing acceptance of a world where magic is popular enough to fill stadiums, where it is taken seriously by adults outside of the children’s party circuit, where it is powerful enough that it can rob banks and deceive highly sophisticated security systems. That suspension is taken to breaking point in this film. The Horsemen’s illusions have never had much of a relationship with reality, but this time around they feel particularly egregious, executable only with the assistance of copious CGI, and as such feel entirely weightless.

There are also some extremely spurious claims over the power of magic — including one that World War II was largely won thanks to a magician. Never mind that the claims of real-life magician Jasper Maskelyne, referenced in the film, have largely been debunked; according to this, he “conquered the Nazis”. A script groaning with leaden dialogue and utterly unfunny jokes doesn’t really sweeten the offering.

Still, there’s some fun where you can find it: a wacky magic mansion boasts some elaborate trickery that would make for an enjoyable escape room, including some M.C. Escher staircases, an Inception-style rotating corridor, and a perspective-trick straight out of The Lord Of The Rings. And there are nice nods to/rip-offs of everything from Mission: Impossible to Toy Story 3 and even Talladega Nights. But it’s hard not to shake the feeling that this is the Austin Powers: Goldmember of the franchise: yes, admittedly, all of these films are quite silly, but the quality drop-off in the third film is a bit steep.