Now You See Me (Spoilers Possible, and Likely)

[Armstrong 1st MRB]

I went out to see this film for my 19th Birthday, I had liked the looks of the trailer right before Django Unchained when I bought it on Blu-Ray, and I knew and enjoyed the work of many members of the cast. I also liked the potential behind the ideas that they used, a group of expert magicians using their skills to pull off some grand feats and get out of situations that would be otherwise impossible to get out of all for some greater goal. I felt that they could have done a good job with this movie, and I doubted the bad newspaper review my friend showed me about it since I don't trust newspaper movie reviewers anyway after their crappy reviews didn't align with how I judged the quality of the movies I'd seen. Unfortunately for me, the papers got it right for once.

They said that the biggest problems with the film was in the plot, and after watching the movie, I can safely say they were right. See, I loved the first fifteen minutes of the film, I loved how they introduced us to the four magicians and brought them togather right in the beginning in what I thought was going to be a story where we followed them and were supposed to grow attached to. Well, for those who haven't seen the film, I can tell you right now, ignore everything that you see before the title hits the screen, and every other scene where they show those four characters, because as interesting as they are, you're not supposed to be interested in them. You're supposed to be interested in the story of the Police Detective and his French Interpol Partner who is trying to bring them down, and that of a Magic Show Critic (Morgan Freeman's Character) who to me was probably the more interesting of the two to watch.

I couldn't believe what the writers must have been doing when they wrote the plot for this movie, because its crazy. Characters and plot lines are dropped and picked back up at almost random points, long stretches of dialogue (particularly from the French Interpol Agent) which may be supposed to evoke something profound or emotionally stirring in us as the viewers get boring, the tricks which are very cool and are attempted to be explained are not fully explained, reasons behind what certain characters are doing in the grand scheme of the story are paper-thin at times; and to cap it all off, the big twist at the end is a mix between completely random and just plain textbook in a bad way.

I don't know how many of you guys saw it, or intend to see it, but I'm glad that the workers at the theater didn't even check my ticket so that I can get a refund(which I haven't take up since I'm a fool like that). I'm dissappointed in it more than anything though, because I think the film could have been amazing; but it turned out to be just full of nice flash and paszazz which I believe failed to execute itself in a good manner. Its scary to me too, because they were able to fool me into wanting to go see it immediately after I saw the trailer and to pass down what other people said about it beforehand(Not that I pay much heed to other people's opinions on a movie I intend to see anyway before I see it.). If more movies are going to come out like that, I fear for what the business is going to become.