Director Ruben Fleischer looks to revive the decade-old franchise “Now You See Me” with his latest film, “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” However, this revival functions purely to turn a profit on younger audiences, and it does so incredibly poorly. Everything from costume design to exposition to dialogue is executed so terribly anyone associated with this movie’s production ought to be ashamed of themselves. It should not be seen at all.
Fleisher adds three Gen Z characters to the original “Horsemen” of the franchise. Aside from age setting them apart from the older cast members, their attire does as well. Any Zoomer watching the film can tell a Millennial, Gen X or the least fashionable Gen Zer to walk the earth was behind the costume design.
The first outfit of the Gen Z girl named June, played by Ariana Greenblatt, is reminiscent of the TikTok-viral e-girls of 2020. The choice of dress is dated. The two Gen Z boys repeat the exact same outfit formula throughout the movie: usually a white t-shirt, a cropped jacket or overshirt and a wide-leg pant. For the sake of inclusivity, June also wears the same clothing combo in later scenes.
The unimaginative formula becomes exhausting, especially when the young characters wear the same casual clothes to formal events. The pieces worn by the cast, both young and old, look cheap as well. Horsemen who pull off massive heists on the wealthy and corrupt and villains who control immense riches should be able to afford more than pleather jackets and trendy, elevated basics.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is where the “show, don’t tell” technique in storytelling goes to die. Original Horseman Atlas, played by Jesse Eisenberg, makes a habit of monologuing characters’ backgrounds and the next trick to be pulled, effectively spoonfeeding the audience the exposition.
The dialogue does not get much better. If viewers were to take a shot every time an old Horseman takes a dig at how young the Gen Zers are, they would be blackout drunk by the end of the movie. The Gen Z versus Millennial and Gen X debate should have been confined to TikTok and Reddit. Whoever greenlit it to go on the big screen deserves to age like milk.
Fleisher really took a step outside the box with the film’s antagonist. Spoiler alert: she has an accent — how experimental. Rosamund Pike plays Verionika Vanderberg, the eye-rollingly, comically despicable super-villain. Pike’s accent throughout the film is tricky to pin-point as it shifts from kind of British to sort of French and maybe a bit German. Turns out the accent is South African, which Pike only achieves some of the time.
The film also contains an irritating amount of buzzwords. Hearing “AI,” “deepfake,” “cryptocurrency,” “anti-capitalist,” “Nazi,” “daddy issues,” “attention,” “slaps,” “motorsport” and “Abu Dhabi” all in one movie sounds like the top 10 trending topics on social media in the 2020s.
If the abysmal script and awful costumes were not enough, there are a plethora of cliches, questionable character decisions, corny life lessons and outright impossible physics indicative of lazy writing rather than movie magic.
Atlas reveals the entire journey he and the young Horsemen will undergo to steal a diamond in busy, public settings where anyone could overhear. The enemy, with eyes, ears and connections spanning the globe, is somehow oblivious to the group’s public announcement.
June gets a “girl-boss” moment to show an older Horseman “girl-power” — how original. Yet again, a Black character has an absentee parent. Wonderful work from Fleischer and co., breaking away from stereotypical portrayals of Black characters in the media.
The film presents the corniest “takeaways” and “life lessons” imaginable. It is as if the screenwriters plucked the lowest-hanging fruit to concoct the script’s “heartfelt” moments.
Where it has no place, a love story is haphazardly slapped together and forced into the movie’s plot. It feels like a half-baked afterthought of a concept slipped through to the final cut via back-to-back blunders by the producers.
Only children would find exposition being spoonfed to them, overused cliches and glaringly horrendous acting and character design to be palateable. Any sensible adult with baseline media literacy would see through the CGI magic tricks to the motion picture’s piss-poor execution. “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” shows Gen Z from Gen X’s perspective for Millennials’ Gen Alpha children to consume at their financial expense. This disappointing motion picture will unfortunately be released in theaters starting Nov. 14.
