Ed Solomon, who wrote the first one, is one of those guys who I just love. He takes really stupid ideas and makes them ENTERTAINING even if not good.

The idea that he bounces back and forth between totally forgettable nonsense like this and projects with Soderbergh makes me giggle.

If you don’t go into it looking for a challenging and thoughtfully laid out story and just want to be entertained, you will enjoy them. The director wants you to feel like you were in a audience at a magic show by reminding you constantly that while you were looking over here the actual trick was being done over there and if you had paid closer attention you could have pieced the puzzle that was the movie together. Except that of course what we are shown is only the distraction and the trick is only explained later on for the benefit of the story and to make the characters seem extremely intelligent and competent.

It is a bit tropeish as you know that somehow even when all the cards are down (is this a pun as we are talking about magicians?) they will somehow pull it off in the end and be successful.

Think the Ocean’s 11 series of movies with magicians.

I’ve only seen the first one and it was fucking stupid beyond belief. I guess anything can become a franchise if you just keep making them.

I’ve only seen the first one and didn’t think it was that great. It’s a heist movie where all of the characters are magicians, which just enabled some lazy writing for a heist movie. Instead of having to come up with a clever way for the characters to pull something off, every time it’s just magic. And not like an actual magic trick that you could explain the mechanics of; they can just do anything. Make anything disappear, make anything reappear, make themselves disappear when there’s nothing around them and they haven’t been to that location before. It’s a heist movie where the characters can use cheat codes, so it never has that moment where you think, “that was smart.”

The first one: Eh? Ehhhh… EhhheeeEEEHHHH??? Eh.

The second one: Eh? Ehhhh??? Eh… Ehh?-eh… Hmmm… M’eh.

My prediction for the third one: M’eh… Mm-eh? Eh-heh? Eh… Eh??? Eh! EH! G’ah! Aaahhhh!!! AAAAAAH!!! -dies from overstimulation-

Finally, Dan Harmon got what he wanted.

The first one was a really dumb action film with a pretty woman in it.

If you like stupid action with zero logic, then sure, if not, eh give it a miss

The first one was okay if you have low expectations.

I liked the “magic fight” in the first movie, because it shows Dave Franco’s character is incredibly capable of turning/working for the government. Like the way he disguises his voice after hearing the other guy say a couple things or disappearing right in front of him, and the cards. Imo they should have used their magic for more espionage and covert shit than whatever the hell they ended up doing.

The second one is dumb as hell, but still fairly entertaining if you actually turn your brain off for most of the physics and such.

I don’t really have high hopes for this one, but I’ll probably watch it on streaming eventually one day when it comes out.