Cinemavenger

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Now You See Me 2

The New Cinemavenger Dictionary (3rd Edition, Revised) defines suspension of disbelief as "Shut the fuck up and enjoy the spaceship battle/unicorn/hot chick who's also smart, funny, a Jedi in the streets, a Sith in the sheets and who cooks and cleans with a smile!"

Like lube at a gay bathhouse, suspension of disbelief is essential to enjoying movies.  You know, other than the non-fiction ones.  Like a condom at said bathhouse, the problem with suspension of disbelief is that if you stretch it too far you're fucked.

When John McClane tied a fire hose around his waist and it saved him when he jumped off the roof of Nakatomi Tower to escape a huge explosion, that was some good suspension of disbelief. 

Three movies later, when the same John McClane barely suffered a scratch when he tumbled 50 yards across asphalt after jumping out of a car going 60 MPH - and the car, using a fucking tollboth as a ramp, took out a helicopter full of bad guys . . . just as McClane had planned - well, there aren't enough magic mushrooms in the world to make that shit believable.

Which brings us to Now You See Me 2, the sequel to the inexplicably popular 2013 original about a bunch of magicians going all Robin Hood on some evil rich guy.  Street magician Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg "Uncertainty Principle"), mentalist McKinney (Woody "I'm So High Right Now" Harrelson), sleight of hand expert Wilder (Dave "'s Not Here, Man" Franco) and newbie Lula (Lizzy "Borden" Caplan), are known as the Four Horsemen . . . despite the fact that you'd have to be deaf, dumb, blind, retarded and a eunuch not to realize that Caplan is as beautifully far from a man as you can get.

Once again, the Horsemen use the power of illusion to take down a 1%er prick, played this time around by Daniel "I'm Not Just Harry Potter, Gawd!" Radcliffe.  The only problem is that the amount of suspension of disbelief you need to buy that their plan could work would crush The Mountain . . . even if he were wearing an Iron Man suit on the Moon.

The Horsemen are world famous, but nobody recognizes them.  Anywhere.  Ever.  Their whole plan hinges on being able to hypnotize anyone, under any circumstances, in a couple of seconds, which is about as possible as Hillary Clinton appearing in Penthouse this month.  The super-secure lab from which the Horsemen steal a one-of-a-kind, uber-important computer chip has no alarm to let people know that the chip has been removed from its case.  But why should the lab have that when it doesn't even have security cameras to catch the Horsemen flipping the chip back and forth to each other . . . right in front of a dozen oblivious security guards?

Hey, Now You See Me 2.  Abraca-fuck you.

June 19, 2016