Butler's Cinema Scene

“NOW YOU SEE ME” My rating: C (Opening wide on May 31)

116 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Big, slick and determined to wow us with its amazingness, the magic-themed caper film “Now You See Me” is less a David Copperfield spectacular than a fumbled bit of sleight-of-hand as performed by “Arrested Development’s” Gob Bluth.

The movie starts falling apart as soon as it begins. “Now You See Me” isn’t about the characters and it certainly isn’t about stage magic. It feels like something the screenwriters (Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt) cooked up on a dare, vying to establish the most outlandish, complicated yarn possible.

What they’ve produced is a towering house of cards that any two-year-old could knock over.

At the outset of Louis Leterrier’s film we’re introduced to four struggling street magicians, each of whom has a magic specialty.  Daniel  (Jesse Eisenberg) is a cocky card manipulator and illusionist. Henley (Isla Fisher) is an escape artist. Jack (Dave Franco…James’ brother) is an accomplished pickpocket. Merritt (Woody Harrelson) is a mentalist/hypnotist.

These rivals are recruited by a mysterious, unseen individual to form a big Las Vegas magic act, the Four Horsemen.

On their opening night the Horsemen “teleport” a French vacationer to the vault of his bank in Paris, where millions in Euros are sucked up into an air vent and end up fluttering over the delighted audience back on the Strip.

Mark Ruffalo

Show biz trickery?  Real magic?

Whatever. The French report that the Paris bank has in fact been robbed, and FBI investigator  Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) take the case. But how are they supposed to charge performers for a crime that took place on the other side of the planet? Especially when the suspects’ explanation is that “It’s magic”?

All the frustrated authorities can do is follow the Horsemen to big gigs in New Orleans and NYC and hope to catch them in the act of pulling off another “magical” crime.

This isn’t a bad premise, but that’s all it is: A premise.  Nothing introduced in “Now You See Me” is developed.  Not the characters, which remain one-dimensional; not the talk about magic and illusion, which is of fortune cookie complexity; and certainly not the big final reveal, which is underwhelming.

The cast members, all of whom have been interesting in other films, are bland here – even reliable old pros like Michael Caine (as the reptilian billionaire who finances the Four Horsemen tour) and Morgan Freeman (as a former stage magician who now specializes in debunking claims of the supernatural and magical).

Director Leterrier made his name with the “Transporter” franchise, the Ed Norton “Incredible Hulk” and the execrable “Clash of the Titans” remake.  We’re not talking about a director of much subtlety or intellectual curiosity. Small wonder that “Now You See Me” plays like a two-hour trailer.

And by the time it’s over, you don’t really care who’s responsible…because nobody in this film is the least bit interesting or believeable.

| Robert W. Butler