Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (dir. Ruben Fleischer)
Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 111 mins
UK Distributor: Lionsgate
UK Release Date: 12 November 2025
WHO’S IN NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T?
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Morgan Freeman, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Ruben Fleischer (director), Seth Grahame-Smith, Michael Lesslie, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (writers), Bobby Cohen and Alex Kurtzman (producers), Brian Tyler (composer), George Richmond (cinematographer), Stacey Schroeder (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
The magician outlaw group known as the Four Horsemen recruit a new generation for their latest heist…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T?
Perhaps the greatest magic trick that the Now You See Me franchise has ever pulled was convincing audiences that they actually missed the Now You See Me franchise. The movies themselves are fine at best, enjoyable for their overly convoluted and often nonsensical plotting as well as their blend of slick magician tomfoolery with Ocean’s Eleven style heist shenanigans, but aside from a few viral clips on social media, none have truly stuck around in the public consciousness long enough for it to gain even a fraction as big a fanbase as some of the more popular franchises out there.
Yet, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t weirdly acts like a legacy sequel to a series of movies that few people have genuine nostalgia for. There are several parts of this movie that follow so many of the regular beats within a typical legacy sequel: a strong focus on a newer, younger set of characters; the older original stars coming in to lend them some worthwhile support; and a couple of notable callbacks to memorable moments from past movies, to name just a few. It’s a little weird to see a movie like this, which is honestly no less silly or elaborate than its predecessors, have perhaps too much confidence in itself and its own heritage, to a point where it automatically assumes its audience has been with these films from the start, even though they’re all just mindless fodder at the end of the day.
Ruben Fleischer steps in to direct this third entry, which begins with young magicians Bosco (Dominic Sessa), Charlie (Justice Smith) and June (Ariana Greenblatt) using the likeness of the now-separated group of legendary illusionists known as the Four Horsemen – J. Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) – to pull off their own magical heists, namely that of some crypto bros whose ill-gotten funds are handily redistributed among the crowd. Soon, though, the trio are approached by the real Atlas, who’s been mysteriously summoned by a secret magic society known as The Eye to recruit them for an international scheme where they, along with the other Horsemen, must steal a valuable heart-shaped diamond that is in the possession of corrupt South African mining matriarch Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), using any and all tricks up their sleeve (pun intended) in order to pull it off.
Anyone who has seen either or both of the preceding two movies in the Now You See Me franchise will fully know going into this one that the plot is not going to make a lick of sense as soon as you start thinking about it, but even that won’t prepare you for how far it goes beyond all sense of sanity. The numerous leaps and bounds that this movie makes are so illogical that they’d give Spock a migraine, for there are many things which happen in this movie that require them all to happen at just the right time and under the right circumstances, otherwise the entire thing falls apart like a pack of Cheestrings. You’ll also be questioning more than a few of the character dynamics, especially among the Four Horsemen who are supposed to have been estranged from one another for years by this point but when together share the same amount of camaraderie when they were originally a group, making their separation nothing more than an unnecessary excuse to split them up. And don’t even get me started on Rosamund Pike’s distractingly wobbly Afrikaans accent.
This script – partially credited to Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, which along with the involvement of Fleischer and actors Eisenberg and Harrelson makes this something of a(nother) Zombieland reunion – clearly revels in its convoluted nature, to where it cares not in the slightest about whether any of it adds up, so long as the viewer is enjoying themselves. And I can’t lie, there were times when I was genuinely entertained by Now Your See Me: Now You Don’t, despite knowing full well that this is utterly, almost laughably stupid. As he did on Zombieland, Fleischer is having a lot of fun staging some of these wacky set-pieces, like a one-shot sequence taking place inside a mansion of mind-bending illusions that is essentially our heroes partaking in a dick-measuring contest with one another, and there’s a considerable energy among the performers and the filmmaking that makes it all feel like a heavily choreographed dance number, albeit an excessively smarmy one.
Plus, in a movie where some of the bigger twists are a little easy to predict, there are also a couple of major surprises which in true magic show fashion I did not see coming, some involving one or two unannounced cast members from the previous Now You See Me movies. It’s not like they’re a quick hi-and-bye cameo either, as they stick around long enough to become actual supporting characters for the rest of the movie, which is the kind of fan service I tend to like, even in scenarios like this where there’s ultimately no solid reason for them being there other than to appease long-time fans (if any actually exist, which they must if this movie is treating itself like a legacy sequel).
If this is anything like the other movies, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t will probably do fine with audiences that may be looking for enjoyably silly big-screen entertainment before retreating back into relative obscurity. But once again, the true magic trick lies in this franchise’s perseverance, so we may well get many more of these movies in the future – and like with the similarly so-dumb-it’s-fun Fast & Furious film series, the potential is strong for it to creep closer and closer toward that sweet spot of cinematic stupidity where even critics can enjoy its mindlessness. So long as it plays its cards right, of course.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t revitalises the magic-themed heist series with perhaps the franchise’s most convoluted and nonsensical narrative yet within a weirdly presumptuous legacy sequel framework that, despite its blatant ridiculousness, has enough charm and energy to make for mindlessly entertaining fun.
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