Little Albert has a difficult life.
He's small, kids pick on him all the time, and he has the
tendency to whimper when he's sad. But today is a good
day for little Albert as his absentee mom has brought him a
magic kit for his birthday, sponsored by the amazing Rance
Holloway (Alan Arkin) and it's changed his life as well as the
life of his new best friend Anton. It didn't change
their childhood's as both of these little dudes probably got
mercilessly pummeled all the way through high school, but boy…
did it change their adulthood. And thus the tale of 'The
Incredible Burt Wonderstone' begins.
The years have passed and they have been quite lucrative for
Burt (Steve Carell) and Anton (Steve Buscemi), whose magic
show is now headlining at Bally's under the watchful eye of
the Casino mogul Doug (James Gandolfini). Unfortunately
the friendship is strained as Burt has become basically the
same person that used to pick on him when he was a kid.
He's nonchalant about the show, he's rude to his friend, he
sleeps around and he's just not all that great a person.
Maybe the new addition of a hot young assistant in Jane
(Olivia Wilde) will bring Burt around, but no, even though the
fledgling magician Jane has idolized Burt for years, it took
Burt all of two minutes to ruin all of that.
More trouble is on the horizon for
Burt and Anton in the form new age magician Steve Gray, played
by Jim Carey, who we gotta say was straight up killing it in
this movie. As far as we can see, Steve Gray isn't
really much of a magician as he does stuff like cut himself
and sleep on hot coals, but he does look to be the future of
magic. Worse still is that Steve makes Burt and Anton's
show seem old and dated. Not helped at all by the fact
they open
their show with 'Abracadabra', largely
considered Steve Miller's worst song… not buy us here at the
FCU, but by some. Anton does have an idea to help them
compete with the Steve Grey's of the world, but it doesn't
work, best friends are no more, Burt no longer headlines at
Bally's and life is sad for Burt Wonderstone.
But not so fast my friends! Sure Burt is homeless as he
has squandered all of his cash, and he is still a bit of a
jerk, but absolution is just around the corner. He takes
a gig a nursing home, and who's there? Why a super old
Rance Holloway who puts Burt back in his place, helping him to
remember what made magic magical. Not only that, the hot
assistant is seeing him in a new light. Sure Burt is old
enough to be her dad, but we're all legal here, and that's
what's really important. Even Anton is back as true
friendship can never be erased by rampant
assholery. These magical people just need one big
break to get back on top. And like a sports movie with a
last second shot, we got a magical movie with a last second
super trick.
Okay my friends, here's the issue that we saw as the problem
with director Don Scardino's 'The Incredible Burt
Wonderstone'… It's just not stupid enough. I mean
it's kind of stupid, but you're going into this movie thinking
you're about to watch a farce, and it is a farce… but then
it's not a farce. Apparently they call this 'tonal
inconsistency' in the critical circles. In fact, so
inconsistent 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone' was, most of
the actors all seemed to be acting in a different kind of
movie. Jim Carey got the memo that this was to be farce
and shouldn't be taken seriously at all. Steve Carell
however was locked into a fairly standard comedy, where Olivia
Wilde was in a Romantic Comedy. Steve Buscemi and Alan
Arkin seemed to be going with whatever the flow happened to be
at that given time. Tonal Inconsistency I hear they call
it.
That being said, of course 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone'
had its moments. No doubt, there were some really funny
bits in this movie, and not all of them involved Jim Carey who
did everything in his power to steal this movie. Most of
the humor was front loaded, except for the one gag at the end
when they showed us how Burt and Anton pulled off their great
trick to close the show. But there was a humor gap there
as the movie went from semi-farciful to… heck… I guess we can
call it RomCom Road to Redemption mode. Who wants to see
that? It didn't help that Steve Carell's transition from
jerk-off to sympathetic hero didn't actually happen. Or
let's just say it wasn't a gradual character progression, thus
we were kind of still rooting for a jerk, because the script
called for us to do this.
All we're saying is that while 'The Incredible Burt
Wonderstone' had its funny moments, it looked as if it
should've been a whole lot funnier with just a touch more
focus on being more stupid. But what do I know?
I'm just some cat who watches way too many movies.
