Director: Louis Leterrier
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 0.0
The 2013 Award for Worst Screenplay goes to ... this. A mysterious mastermind brings together four street magicians with unique skills (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco and Woody Harrelson) to stage a successful Vegas show (funded by super-rich Michael Caine) that involves taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the audience. Both smug and idiotically scripted, this is grating from start to finish: it's completely full of itself (it brings out the worst in Eisenberg, for one) and it's guided along by a series of contrivances and plot holes so gaping you couldn't fit Woody Harrelson's forehead through it. Some of the (very few) slight-of-hand aspects are fun, but it's largely a movie about magic done via CGI, which is cheating - also cheating is the unabashedly ludicrous revelation of who planned and organized the group, which washes over the preceding nonsense with even more nonsense. Watching this is like being assaulted in an alleyway and managing to survive the attack ... then, after calling for an ambulance, having that ambulance get into an accident and catch on fire.
