Now You See Me

You know what I saw? A waste of talent.

From hackmeister Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans) comes a film that thinks it is so smart that it will talk down to you and tell you that you're stupid and nowhere near as smart as the film you are watching is. If you've seen any film like this, you will be heads and tails much smarter than this drivel.

Honestly, this is my third time trying to write this review after it has been deleted multiple times. I have spent way too much time trying to get this review out than this film deserves. This is my shorter review of the film as I really don't want to have to rewrite this damn thing again.

Magicians, The Four Horsemen: Daniel Atlas, (Jesse Eisenberg) Merritt McKinney, (Woody Harrelson) Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) are approached by an unseen figure. One year later, they are performing a magic trick in Las Vegas where they rob a bank in France and make it literally rain money on the audience. In the crowd for the trick are The Four Horsemen's benefactor, Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) and an ex-magician who debunks tricks, Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman).

As robbing a bank is a federal crime, FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes is assigned to the case with Interpol Agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent). The audience spends most of the film with these two characters because if we spent the bulk of the film with The Four Horsemen then we would know all the twists that were coming our way.

Unfortunately for the audience and director Louis Leterrier, these twists are so obvious and predictable, than anyone who has seen any film will know where Now You See Me is heading way before we get there. The film tries its hardest to be clever, but no matter how many twists of over the top camera movements that are thrown our way, its all just smoke and mirrors to try and cover up a bad script and an overall bad film.

The biggest issue is the waste of talent this film attracted. Most notable for being wasted are Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Michael Caine especially, is wasted as the very rich benefactor. In the second half of the film, his character practically disappears while Morgan Freeman basically has one purpose in the film. And speaking of one purpose, Dave Franco's Jack also serves only one purpose and literally felt like the writers had nothing to give this character except for his one purpose. Just a waste.

You're smarter than this film thinks you are. Don't be like me and giving in to seeing the film.

4.0/10

As an aside, here's a picture of Mark Buffalo. Much more entertaining.

Domestic Box Office Prediction - June 7-9 2013

Been a while since I last updated the site, and as usual, I do apologize. As movies for me have been hard to come by lately, I am going to offer my box office predictions each week. As I know nothing and am not, "in the know" as they say, odds are I will be way off. This is just something for me to blog about and see how far off I can be on box office predictions when I try.

Kicking off my first attempt at providing a box office prediction is a slow week in the middle of the Summer movie season. 2 new wide releases are opening and neither will make for a record weekend. Opening in 3,365 theaters, you have Google: The Movie The Internship. Directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen) the film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as new hires within Google. The commercials have shown a film that appears to be tired and lazy and really only about promoting the true star of the film: Google.

Vince Vaughn has had a rough couple of years at the box office. The last 2 films that he has top-lined: The star-studded "comedy" The Watch and Ron Howard's misfire The Dilemma both tanked at the box office. Vince Vaughn has plenty of hits within his resume, but unfortunately, most of those films were early on his resume. The good news for Vince Vaughn is that his last hit was the PG-13 comedy Couples Retreat, which has the same rating as The Internship. The bad news is that Couples Retreat was four years ago.

Owen Wilson finds himself in the same boat as Vince Vaughn. Box office hits have been really hard to come by lately. Not even releasing a film in 2012, we have to go back to 2011 to see Owen Wilson's box office track record. Cars 2 was a hit, but with that film being a Pixar film, it would have made money with or without Owen Wilson as the star. Midnight in Paris was a moderate hit (especially for Woody Allen standards) but was not setting the box office on fire. The remaining 2 films from 2011: The Big Year and Hall Pass were quickly forgotten and disappeared from the box office as quickly as they arrived.

Both Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson need a hit, and I'm sure this looked like a can't miss idea. Re-team the duo from Wedding Crashers, direct them by a director who makes safe films with big returns, and this would be a slam dunk. Unfortunately, this film is not 2005 and The Internship will struggle to make it's $58 million dollar budget back domestically.

The other wide release is the small-budgeted, but high-concept; The Purge. With only a budget of $3 million dollars and starring Ethan Hawke, The Purge tells the story of a futuristic America, where one day of the year, all crime is legal for a 12 hour period. Ethan Hawke plays a family man who must survive The Purge with his family as citizens try to attack them in their home.

Coming from hit producer Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes producing company, the small-budgeted film lacks the usual pizzazz of Summer fare, but offers the audience a different type of film as counter-programming. Ethan Hawke is coming off the similarly-produced Sinister, which became a solid hit over the Fall of 2012, and may help The Purge over perform even more than it already will. I would look for The Purge to contend for the box office lead against stale holdovers and the limp-looking The Internship.

Beyond the new releases, the remaining holdovers might hold better than past weeks due to the weak competition. Now You See Me might hold the best as the numbers during the week show the film doing solid business. Now You See Me will again contend with Fast and Furious 6 while After Earth will plummet after its disappointing opening weekend and bad word of mouth.

My prediction for this week's top 5 are:

The Purge - $19.7 million
Now You See Me - $17.7 million
Fast and Furious 6 - $17.3 million
The Internship - $16.2 million
Epic - $10.3 million

I know I will be way off, but this is just something fun. Hope you enjoy it.