Director: Don Scardino
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Film Pulse Score: 3.5/10
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is another film that can be added to the now lengthy slate of “wacky occupation” movies that we’ve seen so many of over the last decade or so. Talladega Nights, Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Anchorman, Balls of Fury, they all have nearly the same plot with the only difference being the occupation and the level of funny. Unfortunately, Burt Wonderstone is an only occasionally funny movie that simply falls too much in line with these other films and winds up being formulaic and uninspired.
The film starts with Steve Carrell’s character of Burt as a child, who is relentlessly bullied and finds an outlet in magic after receiving a do-it-yourself kit for his birthday. The kit was created by one of the early masters Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin) and inspired Burt to become a professional magician. Along the way he becomes friends with Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) who shares his love of magic and the two become world famous performers, headlining Bally’s in Las Vegas.
As with most films of this ilk, Burt lets the fame go to his head and loses sight of the true reasons he became a magician in the first place after being ousted at Bally’s and losing his fan-base to a hot new Chris Angel-like street magician named Steve Gray played by Jim Carrey. Now, with the help of his long-time fan and assistant played by Olivia Wilde, he must rekindle his passion for magic and climb to the top once more.
If this plot sounds similar, it’s because it is. Take out the magic and put in Nascar and you have Talladega Nights. Or take it out and put in local news anchor and you have Anchorman. The biggest difference between this and those two movies is that they are much funnier. It’s not that Burt Wonderstone wasn’t an entertaining or enjoyable film to watch, but it frankly just wasn’t funny. It’s sad when you go see a comedy in a mostly full theater and no one laughs at anything on screen. What’s worse is that there was a great comedic cast featured that just felt like they were wasting their talent. There were a few sparse moments of humor, but they all felt too little too late.
After seeing Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies at SXSW, it was clear that Olivia Wilde has great comedic ability, however the script of this film prevented her from showing off any comedic chops whatsoever and relegated her to nothing more than the love interest.
The rest of the cast is rounded out with James Gandolfini as the pompous head of Bally’s, and Jay Mohr and Michael Herbig as two fellow magicians who had some of the funniest lines in the entire movie.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a generic, unfunny, comedy in the most vanilla sense. There are no risks taken by the director or the script, and everything felt like it was just created to make a couple bucks. It’s a shame because one would think making a film about the world of professional magicians would be hilarious. Unfortunately, this movie is about as funny and creative as a manila folder.
