I liked it in the theater, and I liked it today, when I watched it again. It had a lesser impact because I knew the twist and turns, but the magic tricks were still awesome, the escalation of the whole con and revenge well done and the movie has no malice, no unnecessary deaths to give it "meaning", nor any casualties. You have to see this movie. It worths the time.

Having said that, It is true though, that the dialogue and parts of the story seemed forced at points. Also, some actors do some amazing work while others are, at least in my opinion, quite awful.

Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Freeman and Caine are amazing. Melanie Laurent and Ruffalo do their best effort to sell some too forced story beats, and Ruffalo in particular struggles to give his character any charm or believability, stuck in the middle. Isla Fisher and Dave Franco were a cringe fest.

SPOILERS! SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

A LOT of people saying that Mark Ruffalo's character being in the FBI, just to have revenge about his dead father (another magician) is too much work not to be ridiculous.

IT WAS "THE EYE"!!!!! The secret organization called "The Eye", has enough power (and in a too obvious comparison to the Illuminati) to pull some strings and easily make Ruffalo an FBI agent.

Now. You can call the tricks unbelievable to your taste, and that's your taste. But they are more or less as unbelievable as the one of the Ocean's Eleven movies. In my opinion, the movie is good enough to let you forget the implausibility of all and ejoy it