Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
A madly spinning top of a movie, powered by an eagerness to please that somehow comes off as more innocent than calculated.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
For their next trick, they make a next trick sound like an attractive prospect.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Why make a sequel? Well, why not: This one is more fun.

Name : Mark Daniell / Alias : Toronto Sun
By the time we get to the London-based finale, the illusion the Horsemen pull off comes across as just completely implausible. It's almost as if the filmmakers were saying - didja get all that? Well, too bad.

Name : Tomris Laffly / Alias : Time Out
Forget what trick-debunker Morgan Freeman says: You don't have to see this to believe it (or see it at all).

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
And of course, there's no danger of mistaking computer-enhanced trickery for actual sleight of hand, so even the modest but honest pleasure provided by quality card work is compromised.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
This is no mere haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Now You See Me 2" is a sequel that gets it right. It's as if everyone involved here analyzed what worked the first time around in 2013, and then decided to top it.

Name : Lenika Cruz / Alias : The Atlantic
But very little about this hollow sequel to 2013's heist thriller Now You See Me feels mysterious; its biggest set-pieces will make viewers ask not "Whoa, how'd they do that?" but "Wait, huh?"

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
The film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson . as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Making a successful sequel is always a little bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But the only magic trick here is how slowly they've made two hours of our lives disappear.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Twice as preposterous and half as fun as the original.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie offers neither the astonishment of the magicians' artistry nor a dramatic view of how they do it.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Just as cheerfully outlandish as the caper flick's precursor, with the acceptance of fancy tricks and misdirection twists dependent on an audience's love of a good hoodwink.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
There's no arguing that there's a clever concept that anchors the "Now You See Me" franchise - expect more sequels - but razzle-dazzle and the art of misdirection can take you only so far.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What it doesn't have is any kind of real magic.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
More than once, characters in "Now You See Me 2" make references to pulling back the curtain. And what's behind that curtain is just as much of an incomprehensible jab at the audience as everything else in this film.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Now You See Me 2 disappears with not a poof, but in a hyper-kinetic blur of hectic plot mechanics, ceaselessly nattering characters and so many ploys of misdirection that the film's own direction got lost up someone's sleeve long ago.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you'll find that - like magic - it's disappeared.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
"Horsemen reappear in London; world holds its breath," blares a newspaper headline in this sequel, rather overestimating the world's fascination with magicians - as well as its recall of the first movie .

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chu is more craftsman than poet, but the charismatic ensemble cast engages in the trickery with style.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As the illusions mount, they don't amount to much, leading up to a big finale that piles on the improbabilities and quietly sweeps them under the rug.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
No less than in the glossy caper's 2013 predecessor, the plot rides a surging tide of ridiculousness and culminates in a pileup of unconvincing explanations.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This longer, louder sequel to 2013's Now You See Me adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada." You wish the Horsemen would make you disappear.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Pay no attention to the plot behind the curtain, Now You See Me 2 says, because it barely registers and hardly matters. Just go with it and watch two hours-poof!-disappear.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
My main problem with these movies is insufferably old-fashioned. With so much digital effects work guiding so many of the action scenes, the simple pleasures of sleight-of-hand are all but lost.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all about mystery and suspense, deceiving the audience in entertaining ways. It's much more enjoyable than the typical summer sequel du jour.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It gets off on the highwire fun of living on a digital dare and then pisses away its provocations by lecturing us with a metaphorical take on social media as an STD. What a buzz kill.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The perils of social media may be ripe for the after-school-special treatment, but less expectedly, they make for a half-decent Hunger Games riff.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
A successful and memorable thriller.

Name : Nick Patch / Alias : Toronto Star
Like one of its daredevils hanging one-handed from skyscraper scaffolding, Nerve mostly manages to maintain its precarious balance of pulpy suspense and social commentary.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
For about 45 minutes, the movie's engrossing fluff, a stylish cautionary cyber-tale aimed primarily at teenage girls.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
If it collapses in the end by going dark and also bonkers and bringing in hackers ex machina to clean up its mess, well, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost can say they did it for the feels.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Bright, brisk, and enjoyably silly .

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Joost and Schulman use nearly every trick imaginable to keep Nerve's energy at a consistently high level and to give it a visual uniqueness.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I've seen this year .

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Nerve looks fabulous and the pace is evenly adrenalized, which makes up for cliched characters, a concocted premise and commentary that is a bit on the nose .

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
[The] screenplay . amounts to little more than a string of flashy stunts before fizzling to a contrived close. For all its hints at imminent catastrophe, "Nerve" feels surprisingly tame.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Franco grins diabolically throughout, and Roberts sounds a bit like a junior version of Sarah Jessica Parker's "Sex and the City" character . otherwise, they're awfully bland, and it's hard to get too invested in their fate.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Nerve gives moviegoers everything they'd want from a teen romance. It's a little less successful as a critique of life in the age of Instagram.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
With its attractive young cast and a multiplatform media campaign, Nerve won't need to rely on going viral to find its audience, but it's unlikely to be trending for long once viewers digest its simplistically cautionary message.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It comes off like a combination of "The Hunger Games," "Saw" and Pokemon Go. Maybe that sounds like a good thing. It's not.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : indieWIRE
Blisteringly cool one moment and ridiculously silly the next, this punchy and propulsive late summer surprise is able to capture the way we live now because it displays such a vivid understanding of the reasons why we live that way.

Name : Anna Smith / Alias : Time Out
Other films - including David Fincher's The Game (1997) - have done this better, but with its engaging story, energetic soundtrack and slick production values, Nerve is an easy watch for restless young minds.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Emma Roberts and Dave Franco are just fine, but there's no huge onscreen spark between them. Most of the supporting roles are thinly drawn and forgettable.

Name : Allen Salkin / Alias : New York Daily News
Clever, exciting, sweet and full of quick twists that never devolve from serving a well-built story.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An enjoyable teen flick about the glamour and danger of the internet.

Name : Odie Henderson / Alias : RogerEbert.com
Part of me screamed for this film to get off my lawn, but an even bigger part of me succumbed to playing by its rules. Nerve is too much fun to stay mad at for long.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Not only does it uncannily evoke the feelings of awkwardness, alienation and excitement that come with being a teenager, but it conjures the kind of suspense that will give your armrests a workout.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
"Nerve," let's be clear, isn't a movie to take seriously, yet its fast lunge at topicality - the way it uses the contest at its center as a lightning-rod metaphor for how young adults interact in the digital age - is part of what's fun about it.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Nerve knows we're all playing the game.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Mr. Robot" meets "Battle Royale". a neon-saturated teenage dream, high on first kisses and digital hearts.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Nerve" is sharp looking and delivers real jolts, even if the climax pushes things a bit far and wraps up too easily. Or maybe it's an accurate look at what'll happen when "Nerve" becomes real?

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While the film's vertiginous set pieces are appropriately heart-clenching, it's not nearly as successful at little details like plot and character.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
The film has a fatal messaging problem: it lambasts online group-think and "hiding behind screen names" while also glamorizing the game.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
Nerve is a dizzyingly of-the-moment good time, a dystopian meet-cute in present-day New York.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The city and the plot points wheel right by, the leads fetchingly entranced with each other. If one patch of dares disappoints, there's another coming right up, and the directors stage and shoot them with swooning neon kinecticism.