Who doesn't love a good magic trick? Lord knows I do. I even fancied myself a magician at the age of fourteen. As my parents have done with all my endeavors, they supported my plan to be the next Chris Angel. Well, without the press-on tattoos, ear gauges, and douchey persona . . . . They bought me the magic rings and the cigarette in the quarter trick. All the classics. My dream to make a go at professional trickery quickly went up in a puff of smoke, so to speak. In Freshman English, we were supposed to demonstrate a process in front of the class. Most of the jocks showed how to make a peanut butter sandwich. Pretty fascinating stuff. I think I might have been better off showing off my sandwichery, because I totally failed in showing off my magic skills. I was trying to make a quarter disappear, but my hands shook so badly that the coin dropped to the floor, making an echoing clink clink clink. I ended my presentation with, "And that's how you do magic." That was the end of my magic career.
It's really no surprise that I was so enamored of magic, considering my lifelong love of cinema. In the early 20th century, the films of Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith played in the same vaudeville theaters where Abracadbra men applied their trade. Early filmmakers like George Melies used the new motion picture camera to perform never-before-seen magic tricks. Rocket ships crashed into anthropomorphic satellites. Moon men disappeared in small colored explosions. At that time, Melies used a simple cut in action to achieve this effect. Over the last century, cinematic magic tricks have gotten more elaborate, and it is easy to forget that filmmakers and magicians were once close cousins.
Hollywood has not forgotten its relationship with its magical forebears. While it is not a very common genre, the Magic films show up every few years. I love them all. I probably watched Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions 30 times. It's a pretty bad movie, but you gotta love a private-eye Scott Bakula fighting demonic magicians. Cinematic gold. Then there's the much better and much less gory The Prestige. Christopher Nolan's tale of dueling illusionists is a great period piece mystery that depicts the obsession behind most of these illusory acts. The Magic film is really about cinema itself. It's about drawing an audience in, telling them a story, and showing them something they've never seen before.
The main pitfall of the Magic film genre is that the audience knows they are being misdirected. This is nowhere more evident than in Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me. From frame one, we are told that nothing is as it seems. The heroes of the tale, The Four Horsemen, are a group of hip, funny, intelligent magicians. They use their great gifts to rob from the rich and give to the poor. It's Robin Hood meets David Copperfield. Well, not the Charles Dickens book . . . the magician with the big goggle eyes. Remember he made that tank disappear like 10 years ago? Anyway, we know that these four magicians are going to outsmart the authorities, the bad guys, and, ultimately, us. For viewers it's hard to get comfortable watching a film like this. In every scene, it feels like one more carpet is pulled out from underneath our feet. Oh, that guy wasn't dead? Oh, there was a trap door there? Nothing is stable in this film; the characters, the motivations, even the narrative. It is hard to really immerse yourself in a film when the director keeps shaking his finger at you.
Director Louis Leterrier may know how to perform a good trick, but that doesn't make him a great director. This guy's career has run the gamut from good (Unleashed), to bad (The Transporter 2), to god-awful (Clash of the Titans). Seriously, Clash of the Titans gave me a migraine. Most of the time, the director toes the mediocrity line. He's like a French, low-class Ron Howard. The filmmaking is functional and clean. Dialogue scenes are cut in the normal way, over-the-shoulder to over-the-shoulder. The camera floats and swoops around the characters without any real motivation, but at least we see what's going on. Leterrier has no real directorial flourishes, but at least he knows how to stay out of the way of his actors.
It's clear that directing actors isn't Leterrier's strong suit, but he is served well by an entertaining cast. All the actors have been cast to play their normal roles. Jesse Eisenberg plays the fast talking, neurotic male lead. He's like a young Woody Allen with a deck of cards. Isla Fisher plays the sexy and snarky heroine. Woody Harrelson rattles off amusing banter with great ease. And, of course, there's Morgan Freeman as the wise old man. There's not one remarkable performance in the whole film, but there's nothing too laughable. There are some pretty terrible lines, but the entire cast sells it.
They all play their parts well, but it's still a bit hammy. The movie feels like a Las Vegas show: gaudy, sexy, and fake. You can feel the essence of Liberace oozing out of this movie. This fakeness is the film's main problem. Except for a few occasions, all the magic in the film is accomplished with computer generated effects. While digital effects artists are really the great grandchildren of the stage magician, I would have preferred to see some real sleight-of-hand in this film. There is great opportunity for this in Now You See Me, and the filmmakers missed their chance to make a believable yet thrilling film. In one scene, Dave Franco, James' snarky little bro, goes toe to toe with his cop adversary, Mark Ruffalo. Using his illusionist skills, Franco throws handcuffs onto characters, disappears into curtains, and reappears behind mirrors. It's really amazing stuff, and I truly wish there were more of it. Most of the other magic is so outlandish it could only have been done with some keystrokes.
In the end, it's fun. I enjoyed myself from the beginning to end and, while it's a poorly made film, it's a nice magic trick. There's no real replay value to Now You See Me, because once the magician shows you how it's done, you lose interest. Don't worry, I won't ruin the surprise. It's not much of a reveal anyway. This feels as though it should have been a January release, but given the poor quality of the Blockbusters this summer, Now You See Me comes out looking pretty good. $11.75 is pretty steep for a movie ticket, but I don't feel like I was tricked out my money.
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