The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
This is one of those movies that I really shouldn’t admit to laughing to. Of the main actors, the only one used to the upper reaches of their abilities is Jim Carrey, in his best role in years as a Chris Angel-type magician whose specialties include all forms of mutilation and bodily harm. Yet, his act sells. The days of amazing audiences with trading places illusions and swords being plunged into boxes are over…well, for Steve Carell’s Burt Wonderstone and Steve Buscemi’s Anton Marvelton, at least. Best friends, and Vegas’s most popular live act for ten years running, they go on-stage, night after night, doing the same routine to dwindling crowds. When Carrey’s Steve Gray hits the scene, however, it’s clear that Burt and Anton’s days are numbered.
A good comparison was made in one review I read on the film to the sports comedies of Will Ferrell, although his iconic, cult hit “Anchorman” (which Carell co-starred in), is a pretty good one to compare “Burt Wonderstone” with, as well. Like that film when I first watched it in 2004, there’s definitely a lot of potential for mad-cap comedic genius in “Wonderstone,” but I just didn’t grasp on to the high-pitched, broadly comic tone of the film; screenwriters Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley (“Horrible Bosses”) seem to work better when their main characters are more down-to-Earth than the dolled-up absurdities we get in this film. The film finds a center for laughs and as much heart as one can expect from such a film after Wonderstone’s career hits bottom, and a gig at a retirement home puts him in touch with his magical idol, played by Alan Arkin in a role that, like every one the actor is in, he knocks out of the park. Add the sexy Olivia Wilde as Wonderstone’s put-upon assistant into the mix, and James Gandolfini as a self-involved Vegas hotel owner, and this cast has plenty of potential for anarchic laughs, but only Carrey is given the chance to truly shine in this funny, but far from riotous, showbiz comedy.
