3 – 2 – 1, Abracadabra!! Pulling a rabbit out of a hat is child’s play. Let’s see you loot a bank in Paris while doing a live show in Las Vegas!

I don’t really remember exactly when, but at a certain time in the movie, Jessie Eisenberg’s Daniel Atlas – a cardsharp sleight-of-hand prestidigitator – tells the people around him his trade secret: “First rule of magic”, he says, “always be the smartest person in the room”.

While Now You See Me, the new CGI-enhanced card-throwing hoodwinking act playing in cinemas now is a perfect potboiler of suspended belief, its own mantra turns out to be a stumbling step.

Running, maybe as fast as Barry Allen – and that too on borrowed time (the movie is about 115 minutes), we are snappily introduced to four different magic-artists, who somehow share a history which we ‘almost’ get the back story of.

They are: Mr. Eisenberg’s popular street-side act; Woody Harrelson’s mentalist/hypnotist Merritt McKinney, whose laugh-out-loud introduction has him conning a married couple out of a few hundred bucks; Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves, an escape artist whose showbiz-y act involves chains, a water tank and an aquarium full of (very fake) piranha’s; and Dave Franco’s Jack Wilder, a sharp street-hustler-cum-pickpocket, who gets the least screen-time in the movie.

The film’s “other” cast – also introduced as if the screenplay itself was on fire – includes: Morgan Freeman, a celebrity debunker of magicians named Thaddeus Bradley; Michael Caine as Arthur Tressler, a multimillionaire benefactor of our four magicians who one year later turn out to be a swanky multimillion dollar stage-act; Mark Ruffalo’s Dylan Rhodes an FBI man and Mélanie Laurent’s Alma Dray, an Interpol agent, who end up scratching their heads throughout the movie.

You see, Now You See Me has so many people inside the screenplay of Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt, (based on a story by Mr. Yakin and Mr. Ricourt), that everyone has no choice but to stay cramped within their four-foot cubicle of predesigned one-dimensional characterization; this is, perhaps the biggest flaw in producer’s Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci (writers of Mission: Impossible III, Transformers and Star Trek) and Bobby Cohen (Cowboys & Aliens, Revolutionary Road) and director Louis Leterrier’s take. Mr. Leterrier’s vision is neither imaginative to look at, and just marginally of splendor (Mr. Leterrier’s previous filmography is Clash of the Titans, Transporter, The Incredible Hulk).

We may be duped good, especially when the film opens and our four magicians – calling themselves ‘The Four Horsemen’, assembled by a mysterious guy in a hoodie – transport a man from a hundred thousand audience in Las Vegas to a Parisian bank vault, and then whisk away the money back to Las Vegas in a shower over the audience. (if you’re asking: are these people present day Robin Hood’s then, the answer is yes, and no).

This is prime suspension of belief stuff. However, the more the Horsemen’s motives clarify itself, the more pintsized Now You See Me’s, incredulousness becomes.

Despite a number of flat chase sequences and some moments of undue pomposity by Mr. Freeman (whose on-screen career choices have now made him somewhat of a recent day’s Amitabh Bachchan) and Mr. Caine (who mysteriously vanishes from the story after a while), and the charismatic air of the young (and one not-so-young) ‘Horsemen’, the most Now You See Me manages to do is pin itself on Mr. Ruffalo’s Rhodes and make a way for a sequel.

So after the swashbuckling, your experience may rest on: a) how much you like Mr. Ruffalo, and b) do you really care if there really is a rabbit in the hat?!

Directed by Louis Leterrier; Produced by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Bobby Cohen; Written by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt (based on a story by Mr. Yakin and Mr. Ricourt); Cinematography by Larry Fong and Mitchell Amundsen; Edited by Robert Leighton and Vincent Tabaillon; with Music by Brian Tyler.

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Mélanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Common, José Garcia, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Released by Summit Entertainment and HKC, ‘Now You See Me’ is rated PG-13. Parents shouldn’t be cautioned. This is fluff that invites attention then detracts with its slackness; however, you’ll love it for a while at least.