The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Starring: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, and Alan Arkin
Director: Don Scardino
Reviewed by Michael Dalton

There’s a lot floating around in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a new American comedy about magicians starring Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, and Olivia Wilde. Directed by Don Scardino, it’s loaded with rivalry, romance, tomfoolery, and even violent slapstick, and what could’ve been a riot is finally a flat genre piece that expects big laughs from face pulling, funny wigs and retro music. Unoriginal ideas need a fresh approach and a hero we can root for. You won’t find either here.

Burt (Carell) and Anton (Buscemi) have been friends since childhood and now they headline a club in Las Vegas owned by Doug Munny (James Gandolfini). Decked out in sequins, their tricks work fine but after a decade of repetition, the act is growing stale. Meanwhile out on the street, literally, Steve Gray “The Brain Rapist” (Carrey in supreme form) is gaining notoriety for his stunts that include sleeping on hot coals and brutally maiming himself.

Audience attendance is waning for Burt and Anton and Munny demands they smarten up their act, the two friends have a falling out, and Burt, almost broke, finds himself entertaining in an old peoples home where he discovers his childhood idol Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin) is now residing. With Munny set to open a new club and the offer of a rich contract for the act that impresses him the most, Burt, Anton, and Rance with help from their sometime assistant Jane (Wilde), brainstorm the ultimate trick.

Burt Wonderstone tracks Burt’s fall from fame and slowly we watch him endure one humiliation after another. Even with Carell’s incredible prowess, he just can’t squeeze out the laughs and it helps little that Burt is such a fool to begin with. He considers himself a stud and behaves like a diva, firing insults like spitballs (at one point he even speaks down to David Copperfield), and with his teased golden mop, Carell milks the situation for all its worth yet he’s near impossible to barrack for and his fall from grace isn’t so much cruel as expected.

So too with Buscemi who was cast because, to quote the locals of Brainerd in Fargo, he’s so “funny lookin’”. After Anton and Burt fall out, he heads off to a poverty stricken country where instead of handing out food and water, he offers magic kits that the starving children chew on but Scardino’s pacing is off and the inspired gag falls flat. Gandolfini doesn’t fare any better, chewing every morsel of the scenery and grinning like a gorged bear.

Carrey however, trimmed down and in a wig (as well) that will remind survivors of the 70s of Greg Allman, steals the show. Bug eyed and eerily focused on his tricks, Steve Grey is a movie by himself and he works perfectly as the catalyst for Burt to pick up his game but then they turn him into a ruthless competitor and wreck the holier-than-thou lunacy he so expertly brings to the show.

It’s a strange affair and obviously designed for cult status. For a movie about magic there’s little imagination and the jokes? Written by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, whose credits along with Scardino are mostly for television, deliver a hack of a screenplay that provides the comedy but fails to exploit it. Nothing jells and the cast all deserve better. You can almost hear them panting for a decent punchline.