Missing the Magic

Rating: 6/10 (5 September 2013)

Now You See Me is the sort of movie that relies entirely on spectacle and style without much of anything underneath the surface. The plot centers around a band of Robin Hood-esque illusionists with an affinity for robbing banks and the team of FBI agents tasked with bringing them down.
We are first introduced to our protagonists, a group eventually called The Four Horsemen, through a look at each of their individual acts. The movie fails, however, to develop any of them beyond these lifeless, cardboard cut-outs. The same is true for the rest of the cast as well. There's a pair of bumbling FBI agents, a washed up magician aiding the feds, and the Horsemen's benefactor who are never given enough depth to make for really compelling characters.
This movie does contain some relatively cool tricks, but some are a bit too grand to be believable. One in particular involving Isla Fisher floating above a crowd in a giant bubble is a tad ridiculous. All that being said, it's entertaining enough to pull you along for the ride and it can be a pretty darn fun ride at times as long as you don't look too closely.