Proving that bigger-and-faster and more elaborate are rarely better, Now You See Me foolishly wastes a talented star cast. Combining shiny computer-generated effects and car chases with a screenplay fraught with smoke and mirrors, it sheds very little light on the real mysteries of professional magic. For genuine insight on the subject, turn to the marvelous documentary on the life of conjurer Ricky Jay. Enlightenment and entertainment are evident in spades in what is a highly plausible look at a man who does things that are incredibly hard to believe.
If you happen to see the films back-to-back, you’d be advised to wash down the sleek and arrogantly preposterous Now You See Me with the Jay film, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries And Mentors of Ricky Jay. To do it in reverse would needlessly upset a rarefied display of a man’s moving, lifelong dedication to a difficult yet mesmerizing art. Deceptive Practices provides a fine display of previous practitioners who were Jay’s mentors, including archival clips of probably Jay’s most influential mentor, Dai Vernon, who performed well into his nineties. You get the sense Jay, 64, is such a good illusionist largely due to the time and effort he’s devoted to such apprenticehips since Jay started magic at the age of four, at the encouragement of his maternal grandfather, himself an amateur magician.
The small-scale simplicity of Jay’s stunts stand in contrast to the hectic indulgences of Now You See Me. While it may seem unfair to compare a dramatic thriller with a biographical documentary, these two current films loom as stark opposites: the one, a hollow showmanship that grows increasingly farfetched, numbing our curiosity; the other a carefully crafted glimpse into the world of a real-deal magician, uncolored by bombast.
Now You See Me doesn’t merely have rough patches. It’s a start-to-finish cartoon. Its screenplay exceedingly insistent on outgoing itself, which ends resembling a dog chasing its tail. A hearty streak of fine actors (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine) seem to be snickering under their breath. One of the stupidest final twists in recent memory vexes the situation further.
If you pull off these films together, you’ll stand witness to an additional important contrast. The history of magic and his own mentorships are as clear to Jay as how own stellar, amazing performances are to the viewer. His film controls the pace of his tricks, allowing only a sprinkling throughout the film. Now You See Me superfluously dissembles a time-honored art by high-teaching it ad nauseum. Deceptive Practice gently examines a modern-day genius of this art, surrounding Jay’s stunning feats with subtlety and historical context. As a nice bonus, the documentary out-entertains the “entertaining” thriller by wizardly leaps and bounds.
