One Minute Movie Review: Now You See Me

There are three key ingredients in every film that are required for it to manifest any value, entertainment or otherwise.   Miss one and you are in bad shape, skip all three and you quickly have a celluloid disaster.  This film falls, quite definitively, in the latter.   The first ingredient is likability of characters.   If the characters do not create an immediate, gradual, or any connection at all with the audience, the plot, scope, effects, etc., become lessened to a point of insignificance.    For the most part, every character in this film, whether by design or not, is in competition to see which can be the bigger douche-bag, so much so, I thought the entire production was sponsored by Massengill.  I couldn't find a single player to root for which made watching this flick even more cumbersome and annoying.   Second is believablity.  Even in the most fantastic of cinematic voyages, where myth, legend, and fiction reach new heights of wonder and awe, it has to make sense in some way and appear to be possible.  This movie is so convoluted and implausible that it makes Avatar look like a National Geographic Special.    The attempts at twist and turns, surprises and sleight of hand, are all lost in a jumble of ideas that, in the real world, in which this story is apparently based, would be absolutely impossible to replicate even with an unimaginable income, a horde of MIT grads, and years to planning and development    Finally, the third ingredient is entertainment.  With the first two elements thoroughly corrupted the entertainment value becomes non existent.   No more so that in this flop, which drags on way to long with the most ridiculous of payoffs  at its conclusion that require downright nonsensical plot devices which utterly fail.  Put simply, in order to make this puzzle form a picture, the writers and directors, took the pieces and trimmed them to fit into place whether or not they appropriately or intelligently made sense.   This farce is directed by Louis Leterrier, the man who reinvented the Hulk and turned the earlier incarnation from a mutated mess into a well conceived, acted, and produced revamp.  This train-wreck was not a great addition to the resume.  It stars;  Woody, why am I still relevant, Harrelson,  Dave, who, Franco, still who, Isla Fisher, and Jesse, can I be any more annoying, Eisenberg.   Oh, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are part of the cast as well, a fact, I am sure in hindsight, they both regret, at least one would hope.    But the biggest disappointment was lead, Mark Ruffalo, one of my favs and the newest and bestest Dr. Bruce Banner, who now seems to be following the same post Avengers career track as Jeremy Renner is his silver screen choices.    0 out of 5 Kernels: Now You See Me, wish I hadn't, I now understand why this film did such a remarkable disappearing act from the box office.