It took a lot of courage for me to see this movie and review it for all you good people out there. A long time ago, I made a pledge to purge magic, in all its forms, from my life. This includes burning my father’s prized, autograph-authenticated Hedo Turkoglu jersey. I have a pretty simple reason for not trusting magicians: For my ninth birthday party, my parents hired Super Sorcerer Stan off of Craigslist to spice up the celebration. He made a nickel disappear. It didn’t reappear behind my ear, though. It reappeared in my butt.

Now You See Me is chock full of big time actors getting together for a quick, easy paycheck. They all play an exact replica of their established film personas. Jesse Eisenberg continues his streak of playing the Gen-Y twenty-something douchebag. Woody Harrelson continues his streak of playing the Gen-X thirty-plus supercool dude who once had very loving, intimate relationships with both your former girlfriend and current wife, and you’re perfectly ok with that. Their cohorts are played by Isla Fisher and Dave Franco, the latter of whom firmly proves himself to be a substandard actor, but that’s ok as long as he continues his quest to save the planet. They play independently successful magicians who are brought together to form The Four Horsemen by an unseen party, whose identity is finally revealed at the conclusion in a rather underwhelming plot twist.

On the plot twists… there’s a hell of a lot of them. That’s to be expected though, after all, since magic is all about misdirection (you’ll get this speech plenty of times in the movie, so I’ll stop here). However, from a holding-the-interest-of-the-audience perspective, the excessive twists quickly pull you out of the experience, once you realize that every apparent truth in the immediate moment is actually false. Just wait until the over-the-top orchestral soundtrack stops blaring so Morgan Freeman, playing an old magic industry insider, can explain everything that just went down.

Now You See Me consists of two scenes. The first are moderately interesting magic sequences, the conclusion of which is invariably The Four Horsemen somehow stealing millions in cash from corporate entities that must deserve it because they have millions to steal, and raining the cash proceeds down to their audience. The next scene is incompetent law enforcement agents, spearheaded by Mark Ruffalo and the inglorious bastard Melanie Laurent, arguing what to do about it. Spoiler alert: they’re wrong 100% of the time. They have to be, since the magicians are presented as omnipotent, and any crack in that façade would make you doubt the incredible series of plot twists, and there would be nothing left to move the narrative along.

It’s all style and no substance. Michael Bay would have had a field day with this movie. There’s quick cuts, overacting extras, and flashing bright lights everywhere, interspersed with snappy, juvenile dialogue blurted out by an overqualified cast (except Franco) that arrived late on set and didn’t rehearse. Unfortunately, the film is not directed by Michael Bay, but rather some French dude with a lot of consonants in his name that you’re not supposed to pronounce. However, while he’s not Michael Bay, he is the poor man’s version. So the over-the-top chicanery will at least keep you moderately entertained for two hours and help you forget about your pending divorce hearing.

It’s clear that no one involved in the construction of this motion picture had any intention of winning an Academy Award. If they were nominated, I’m sure they would respectfully turn it down, and instead cede the opportunity to Kevin James, who we can all agree got snubbed for his Brando-esque performance in Hitch. The film’s lack of ambition would be a problem if it wasn’t competently executed, but it is, so it gets a passing grade.

While you will also likely give the film a lukewarm reception, there will be two people in the theater who will be in either extreme. The first person will be the lifelong magician, four decades into his trade despite never having made enough green in a given year to prevent the monthly delivery of a check from the Social Security Administration. He will hate this movie with a passion, deriding the commercialization of something that was once pure and noble. He’ll storm out of the theater and head back to the dry cleaners to reassert his plea to Wu that his capes should not be charged at linen rates. The other person will be the failed insurance underwriter who threw on some combination of biker/goth apparel in the late 90’s, learned how to make a Nine of Hearts hover, and now pulls in every bleached blonde west of McCarran International. He’ll love this movie, and when you ask him, he’ll dig deep into his vocabulary and tell you “it was pretty cool”. But I’m much more well-adjusted than these two blokes, so take my word for it… you can see this movie, but only if you’re A) bored to tears B) need to take your wife out for date night but also have to ensure that afterwards you’ll continue to have nothing to talk about.