'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone' review: Wasted Potential
From left, Steve Buscemi as Anton Marvelton and Steve Carell as Burt Wonderstone in New Line Cinema's comedy "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Credit: New Line Cinema
Magic and movies, two different ways of fooling an audience, share a few basic rules, and here is one of them: Never let them see you trying. "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," a promising movie with all the makings of comedy magic, fumbles so badly that you can almost make out the flop-sweat on its brow.
The stress leads Burt and Anton to split, and here is where "Burt Wonderstone" begins flying apart like a fumbled pack of cards. While Gray wins over Bally's owner Doug Munny (James Gandolfini), Burt rediscovers the true meaning of magic with his childhood idol, Rance Holloway (a welcome Alan Arkin). Can a humbled Burt reteam with Anton to reclaim their top spot? Will their former assistant, Jane (Olivia Wilde), realize her own magic-act ambitions?
The scattered script, a four-writer effort, is juggled adeptly by director Don Scardino (NBC's "30 Rock"), but it's a lost cause. We're told that Gray is a conniving charlatan, but Carrey plays him as a harmless fool -- which is it? As for our two heroes, why are we rooting for the bloated Vegas hams over the street rebel? And what is the true meaning of magic, anyway? A glancing line about "childhood" and "wonder" doesn't cut it.
In the end, "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" is that most disheartening sight, a botched illusion.
Steve Carell will appear in four more movies in 2013:
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