Now You See Me 2 & Presidential Election

I hadn’t seen the first Now You See Me, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to get with Now You See Me 2. I should have trusted the 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and, after sitting through almost two dreadful hours of silly illusions, I can now say that the 34% may have been a tad or two too high. What was I expecting? I think the Ocean’s Eleven franchise made me think this would be a comic romp with the Horsemen (or should that be “horsepeople?”)—Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and the added female Lizzy Caplan—winning the day against the forces of evil—Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) and his illegitimate son Walter (Daniel Radcliffe), winning it with clever yet plausible feats of legerdemain. Not even close. It was filled with glitzy illusions, much of the action taking place in the Las Vegas of Asia, Macau, China, and a rain-drenched London. The plot hangs on the Horsemen and their leader Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) stealing a card-sized computer chip that holds the secret of hacking any and all computers in the world. Card-sized so that we can get much sleight of hand involving the ace of spades passing from hand to hand to hand to hand and flying through the air from one to the other. That’s as close to the plot as I can get. Then there’s Woody Harrelson’s evil twin brother, and two of Woody is at least one too many. And two of Now You See Me is at least one too many. As one of the reviewers said, this movie should have done a disappearing trick before it ever got to the theaters.

Once upon a time, I believed that the job made the man (or, in this case, the woman). I believed that the office of President of the United States had enough safeguards that almost anyone could do the job without causing too much harm. When Ronald Reagan was elected, many thought he was too ignorant of national politics to do a good job. But what does an ignorant yet clever man do? He surrounds himself with really intelligent people who point him in proper directions. And that’s what Ronnie did, for eight years. And now we’re faced with an election between two people that make most Americans very unhappy—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, they feel, is too tricky, too manipulative, too untrustworthy, maybe even too dishonest to be president. And then there’s Trump, who is just too Trumpish to be president. He’s ego-maniacal, he’s mean-spirited, he’s racist, he’s almost totally ignorant of what the office is all about, and he’s downright dangerous. What are we going to do in November? Not voting at all is out of the question. Voting for Donald Trump is equally out of the question. That leaves us with Hillary, whether we like her or not. She at least knows what goes on in Washington. She at least has years of political experience as senator, as Secretary of State, as wife of a former president. She at least would be a better choice than the Great Buffoon.

Gary Trudeau has done a number on Trump that seems comically to identify all the uncomical Trumpisms.