Delayed Reaction: Now You See Me 2

The Pitch: You think Now You See Me was improbably and barely held together? Just you wait.

A lot of people complain about franchising and I get it. All the studio money is going into a very few properties. No one ends up taking a chance on new ideas and the whole industry gets stale. That's the running theory. I don't agree with that. Not entirely. At the end of the day, my only concern is if it's a good product. If I had to pick between a bad original movie and a good sequel, I'm going to pick the sequel. Normally, I'm focused on the 2 hours while I'm watching a movie, not what those 2 hours mean. No, what I think we could all use less of is unintended franchises. You know what I'm talking about: hit movies that weren't designed with a sequel in mind but got one anyway. Just look at a list of worst sequels of all time. Son of the Mask, Jaws: The Revenge, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Caddyshack II, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Basic Instinct 2 (and I could keep going). None of these movies were designed with a sequel in mind*. And it shows.

*Yes, there are plenty of intended sequels that were pretty bad too - Batman & Robin, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spider-Man 3 - but those almost all have additional considerations for why they are bad beyond being sequels.

Now You See Me 2 is a textbook example of why it's best to leave well enough alone. Technically, it's not an awful movie compared to the first. If you recall, I had plenty of issues with the first movie. It's just...nonsense. Utter nonsense. I refer to my One Big Leap often because I think it's a good principle. Literally, every single explanation of a trick/illusion in this movie uses up my big leap. Everything about this plot is a "go with me here" explanation and I have no patience for that. Either be clever enough to prepare for all contingencies or own up to the nonsense. If every "master plan" relies on chance, then that's just lazy screenwriting. You know what the crazy thing is? If they didn't spend so much time trying to explain how each illusion works, I would've been less bothered by them, but the movie invites me to question it. And, under the lightest of scrutiny, it doesn't hold up.

If I can find a way to get past the screenplay [which I can't], there's a lot about the movie which is pretty terrific. They bring back Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Mark Ruffalo, all playing to their strengths. While I'm sad to see Isla Fisher go**, Lizzy Caplan could not be more in her comfort zone. And I'll never complain about having Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in a movie. Daniel Radcliffe didn't add much to the movie, but it's a net-plus convincing Harry Potter to play the villain in a movie about magicians. If I could find a way to turn my brain off at all, I'd enjoy this movie. That's a non-starter though. All my issues with the first movie were just amplified.

**Real talk for a minute. I was reminded a lot of The Karate Kid: Part 2 (another terrible sequel) with how they wrote around the casting changes by slipping in an early line of dialogue and never again acknowledging how Ilsa Fisher (and to a lesser extent Melanie Laurent) are missing.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend