A Franchise Mistakes Accessibility for Simplicity and Breaks Itself Trying to Please Everyone

I was a fan of the first Now You See Me back in 2013. It was essentially Ocean’s 11 with magic, anchored by a likable cast — Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine. It clicked with audiences, earning $117 million domestically and $350 million worldwide. Three years later, the sequel swapped Isla Fisher for Lizzy Caplan and director Louis Leterrier for Jon Chu, and like Ocean’s 12, it was breezy fun even if it wasn’t as tight as the original. Unfortunately, it underperformed at the domestic box office ($65 million).

Ordinarily, that would’ve been the end of the franchise, except it became a global hit. Nearly 80 percent of its $335 million worldwide gross came from international markets. It performed so well in China that Lionsgate even floated a China-U.S. spin-off with a primarily Chinese cast. That never materialized, but the studio clearly understood where the franchise’s real power base lived.

Now, twelve years after the original, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t arrives with most of the original cast back — including Isla Fisher, returning to reclaim her place among the Four Horsemen — along with younger additions Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt, and Dominic Sessa. What’s new is the tone, which has been sanded down into something that feels like a YA magic caper. Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) takes over directing duties, and while I assume the intention was to broaden the film’s appeal for younger and international audiences, I’m baffled by the decision to dilute the very inventiveness that made the franchise globally popular in the first place.

This third film plays like a cartoon of its former self. And that almost has to be intentional, because the pipeline of writers included some genuinely decent talents: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland, Deadpool) and Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle) before the reins ultimately went to Seth Grahame-Smith (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Lego Batman), who wringed out whatever cleverness survived the development process. Instead of the franchise’s trademark “illusion-as-heist” structure, the movie settles for the logic and pacing of a theme-park tie-in film.

I may be the only critic in America who went into the third film with real expectations, but it’s a genuine bummer how disappointing Now You See Me, Now You Don’t is. It’s a drag. I get why the settings are international, but some of the choices feel market-tested (which executive suggested a character drive a Grand Prix car through Abu Dhabi?). Rosamund Pike is saddled with an atrocious accent, and the dialogue feels written at a fourth-grade reading level, as if the script were reverse-engineered for machine translation. It’s cringey as hell.

The film opens with Charlie (Justice Smith), Bosco (Dominic Sessa), and June (Ariana Greenblatt) running a version of a Four Horsemen show, Robin Hooding a crypto bro’s fortune. “The Eye” summons them — through Jesse Eisenberg’s J. Daniel Atlas — to pull off a massive job in Belgium: stealing the world’s largest diamond from Veronika Vanderberg, the head of a South African diamond empire used by criminals to launder their money.

As the newbies run into trouble, old Horsemen appear exactly when needed: Franco’s Jack Wilder, Fisher’s Henley Reeves, Harrelson’s Merritt McKinney, Morgan Freeman’s Thaddeus Bradley, and a handful of other returning faces. The “tricks” are uninspired, the direction is surprisingly shoddy (Fleischer has become a studio-for-hire hack), and the performances lurch between overcooked and uninterested. Even the film’s rhythm feels calculated for viewers who won’t mind if the pieces don’t fit together because the subtitles will eventually explain it anyway.

It’s bad. Still, I’ll give the movie this: the final reveal is legitimately surprising. The story credit goes to Eric Warren Singer, and you can feel his fingerprints on the one idea in the movie that actually lands. But the script Grahame-Smith delivered smothers it in dialogue that I have to imagine embarrassed a cast who showed up largely for the paychecks — boosted, no doubt, by Abu Dhabi tax incentives.

What frustrates me isn’t just that the movie is bad; it’s that it’s bad in a way that feels strategically bad. Someone clearly decided the franchise should follow the Fast & Furious model: strip out the Ocean’s 11 qualities and replace it with National Treasure-like qualities broad enough to sell in every market on Earth. And maybe it will work, but it comes at the expense of what was an otherwise decent and fun franchise.