The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

1½  pipes out of 4

Incredible in name but too many detractors inhibit Burt Wonderstone to live up to it. An intriguing dark comedy about the aging magician duo of Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) trying to get their energy and awe back. This would have been good enough except writers John Goldstein and John Daley team with director Don Scardino to take things too far with the addition of Steve Grey (Jim Carrey). Carrey’s character is meant to be a satire of today’s magicians performing extreme acts instead of performing actual magic. Besides almost all of his tricks being physically impossible, Carrey’s character is a complete waste of screen time and deflates most of the comedy before it can get going. There is a point that Goldstein, Daley and Scardino is trying to make which is today’s society is more into brutality and reality than theatricality and awe, but like most of Carrey’s characters, it goes way over the top, even going so far as to make fun of rape by calling himself the ‘Brain Rapist’. Alan Arkin follows up his Oscar nominated role in Argo to supplement Carell and actually is a highlight of the film. He just seems to get better with age. Olivia Wilde plays Jane, an aspiring magician who once idolized Wonderstone but upon meeting him, becomes disillusioned. From the get go one can see that this relationship will be the romance of the film but it just feels wrong. From the way they portray Carell with his makeup and hairdo, he is easily 50 years old while Wilde portrays the young 20 something assistant. The age gap is just too wide to bridge without awkwardness. There were a number of comical moments in the film, most of which come from the interactions between Carell and Buscemi whose chemistry is phenomenal. Over all this is an ok movie which could have been much better without Jim Carrey and his character.