(SPOILER WARNING!!! This article does contain spoilers, if you haven’t seen the movie, just see the first paragraph to be informed without spoilers!!!)

Now You See Me 2 tried hard to be better than the first movie. It does have an interesting premise and plot twists and cool effects, but in the end, it seemed rushed, confusing, and underwhelming!!!

Rating: 3 Stars

Now You See Me was one of those movies where I loved the whole story and the development of the whole film. I appreciated that they brought back the lost art of magic performances and combined it with a heist movie. However, the ending of that movie was just downright confusing and underwhelming. After showing people how it is all an illusion, then in the end they are about to show The Eye and then not show anything at all. It makes you guess, is magic for them actually real or not. That ending really had me second guessing myself on what this movie was really all about. Now that there is a sequel to this movie, I was hoping to get some clarification to what The Eye is really about. I’m happy to say that they do, however, not in a good way.

What I Like: Director John M. Chu does have a knack for making things look really cool on screen. I mean if it wasn’t for his directing in some of the Step Up movies, those movies would’ve been horrifically terrible. He made the magic performances look real cool with the special effects. He also showcased the city of Macau very nicely, and now I want to visit that city. The beginning of the story was very intriguing. You do get the same lines of using magic performances to steal something big, but in this case they intertwined both of these movies and put it all together. I wasn’t bored watching this movie, but I was intrigued with where this movie will take us and hopefully explain everything. One of my favorite scenes was when The Four Horseman planned a heist to steal a microchip. The way they used the car flicks and slight of hand was very cool to watch, and I loved seeing how they all worked together to pull it off. They pretty much brought back all the important actors (with the exception of Isla Fisher, more on that in a second), and they still have good chemistry like in the first movie.

The So So: This movie had a lot of plot twists and even counter plot twists. Some of the plot twists made sense worked, but there were some that were way too predictable. Probably the most obvious one is Morgan Freeman’s character, Thaddeus Bradley, was working for the bad guys. Although, the counter plot twist was that he was actually working for The Eye this whole time. There are many twists like this, but for the most part, it wasn’t anything mind blowing.

What I Didn’t Like: Daniel Radcliffe played the villain of this movie named Walter Mabry. A magician himself who tricked The Four Horseman to help him get the microchip. Radcliffe as a villain really didn’t do it for me, and it was hard to take him seriously. If it wasn’t for the plot twist of his father being Arthur Tressler, played by Michael Caine, his character would’ve been very weak. I thought the way they wrote off Isla Fisher’s character as Henley Reeves, and brought in Lizzy Caplan as Lula May was very weak and rushed into the story. The sub villain in this movie was Merritt McKinley’s twin brother Chase McKinley, both played by Woody Harrelson was very weird. You get to see Woody Harrelson overact as Chase which really made this movie go down a weird route. The final trick of tricking the villains where they thought they were in a plane flying, but ends up not flying was way over the top, even though they explained it well. However, the final plot twists at the end, where it seems The Eye is all about illusions than real magic, but immediately rushed the final plot twist that made it rushed, confusing, and underwhelming. Pretty much the back story of Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo, growing up hating Bradley to a point of screwing him over because he blames him for his father’s death (a backstory that should’ve been showed in the first movie). Ends up that they were friends and his death was an accident, but he had to keep his character as his rival. My question is, why it took 30 years for him to tell him that? He even went to jail for a year in a half because of his vengeance for revenge. Also, it shows how The Eye really planned all this out to put Arthur Tressler and Walter Mabry behind bars. All in all, everything was completely underwhelming, and that is a shame, cuz the movie had potential.

Overall: I thought this sequel made the same mistakes as its predecessor, but forced the story which took it a step back. Watching the magic performances and directing of John M. Chu does make it watchable at the very least, but they really need to come up with a better conclusion. For the sake of story. I just hate being confused and underwhelmed by a movie that does have great potential at the beginning!!!

Rating: 3 Stars