Despite the majority opinion I really enjoy 2013's Now You See Me; sure some of it doesn't make sense but for some reason I find it very entertaining. This year's sequel sees us eighteen months since the events of the first film and the Four Horsemen are tasked with performing a heist for Daniel Radcliffe.First off, you have to acknowledge the all-star cast here; I really enjoyed them in the first one so it was great to see the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman and more back on board. They all do an excellent job of course and get straight back into these characters who's lives I was fully invested in. After the twist at the end of the original I was wondering how Ruffalo's character would change but I really enjoyed the majority of his arc in this and it builds on what we knew of his back-story already which was cool. We did have some new characters introduced to us and they were just OK; Isla Fisher did not return as the female Horseman so they bring in Lizzy Caplan as this new magician and despite a bit of a rushed introduction she was surprisingly tolerable; her character may be a little irritating to some as she is used as the comic relief a lot which was unnecessary and I do think Fisher's character was more interesting but as far as replacements go, she wasn't bad. Daniel Radcliffe also joins this cast as our antagonistic billionaire who wants something only the Horseman can get; so yeah it's a plot-point we've seen a lot of times in film but hey, it is a heist movie so I'll let it slide. He was absolutely fine in his character, not quite as threatening as sometimes I think he was meant to be but once you get used to this what this type of movie is, he's more than adequate.
Just touching on the plot; it's a basic heist movie with the Now You See Me glitter all over it so plenty of illusions and visually interesting effects. I enjoyed it quite a lot, plenty of action, plenty of tricks, the locations were interesting as well, quite international which I enjoyed. There were a few twists here and there but some you could see coming and others I wasn't particularly keen on. I know they tried to top the big reveal of the last movie but it didn't really work here; it seemed to struggle explaining what it was they were surprising us with. But as a whole the main story worked for me.
Something, or rather someone, I did not enjoy much was a particular character they introduced as a relative to one of the horseman; his purpose was a little unnecessary and what they made him into just brought the quality of this movie down. He was more suited for some sort of comedy which unfortunately this film tried to much of. The first film had funny moments and Harrelson was our comic relief but now they've introduced two more "funny" characters and it cheapened it at times.
My last critique is that unless you enjoy the first film and have watched it recently I don't think you'll enjoy Now You See Me 2 as much. It requires you to remember a lot which was OK for me as I have seen the original a few times but for a casual viewer you are left asking a few questions.
So in the end, if you didn't like the first one, you won't like this. For me it wasn't quite as neat and shiny as the Now You See Me but entertaining enough.
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