I have now seen all the Now You See Me movies
When the first one of these movies released, I straight up did not hear about it once. I had no idea it existed.
It came out when my life was changing a lot, very rapidly - I'd lived in the Bay Area for the better part of two years when it released in 2013, and I was beginning to find my friends and make big decisions about how I wanted to live and spend my time. So I quit watching movies in theaters for a while. And I honestly, don't think I would have watched this one even if I knew it existed. It looks kind of dumb!
When the second movie came out in 2016, I was extremely confused. I felt like someone was trying to trick me. What do you mean there was a big blockbuster action movie???? where Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg play superhero (?) Vegas magicians??? It sounded like a joke. Then I heard that the movies were "kind of bad," according to my friend, and it sounded like an even bigger joke.
This week, for three nights in a row, my husband and I watched the whole series. I found them pretty baffling! They are full of dropped plot threads, they have way too many characters, there are some weird aesthetic decisions surrounding the magic in the first movie in particular which often leave the tricks feeling ungrounded and fake... And strangest of all, they seem to depict an alternate universe where people love stage magicians way, way, way more than they do in real life. I think this Letterboxd review of the second movie from Demi Adejuyigbe sums it up:
I think to truly open up to this franchise, you have to believe that this universe does not have music. Like, as a concept. They have magic tricks instead.
Nevertheless, they are fun to watch! They are dumb in a way that eludes my condemnation. The glam of the Vegas magician presentation is certainly part of it - these actors are playing dumb, cartoonish, performancey people in a kind of dumb, cartoonish, performancey way. They are living in a world so unlike ours that you kind of just have to accept the way they're flattered and adored. In the same way that you have to accept that elves and dwarves exist in a fantasy movie, or whatever, you have to accept that this is a world where Jesse Eisenberg is somehow widely admired for doing street magic in, like, the park.
I'd say that all three films end with twists that kind of make no sense. This is a world where everyone is tricking each other all the time, and every movie takes it a trick too far, I think. The second film is better than the other two - but not so much better that it becomes a genuinely great film. The third movie, from 2025, manages to have only one performer - Justice Smith - who gives a genuinely likeable performance, I think. Its plot makes even less sense than the others.
And somehow, I still had a good time watching these movies! They're not a "so bad it's good" watch. They are bad but somehow still genuinely good to watch. I can borrow the Flop House rating of "kind of liked it."
Can I recommend them?? Not really. I can't say that watching these movies is a better use of your time than watching literally any other movie. You might learn a lot more from watching a bad movie than from watching one of these overly-slick, chatty, kind of dumb, Fast-and-the-Furious-ass magician films. I'm glad I finally did, though! There's a bunch of reviews my friends have left for these movies on Letterboxd that I now understand better, I guess!