‘Burt Wonderstone’ not so incredible

I really wish the dump months would end.

Every year, in between the winter Oscar season and the summer movie months, major studios release the movies they aren’t as confident in.

This period is colloquially referred to as the dump months and frequently sees the release of some pretty lackluster movies. This year, the dump months have been particularly drawn out and painful.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a really bad movie.

Its plot arcs are poorly executed, its characters are underdeveloped, and it totally misses the point of its source material. What makes this movie especially terrible, however, is how mean spirited it is, something that’s sure to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many a theatergoer.

The movie tells the story of Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell), a Las Vegas magician who’s done the same act with his best friend Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) for the last 10 years. Burt has grown complacent and arrogant, however, and his friendship with Anton is beginning to become strained.

Thanks to the challenge of popular street magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey), as well as his own hubris, Burt loses everything. This forces him to humble himself and relearn the fundamentals of magic from his childhood hero (Alan Arkin) in order for him to attempt a triumphant return.

The biggest problem with this movie is just how unlikable and obnoxious a character Burt is.

Burt begins the film as a pretty terrible human being and, through some poorly executed character development, ends the movie as a barely half-decent one. This might have worked out in theory, except the one thing that doesn’t change about Burt is how annoying and boring he is, making most scenes with him fairly unpleasant to watch.

Almost as bad a character as Burt is Steve Gray, whom Carrey plays as an excruciatingly one-noted villain. There’s no depth at all to this character, who’s portrayed simply as a self-absorbed, masochistic heel, but the worst part is that there’s very little difference between Steve and Burt aside from style. They are both unlikable jerks; it’s just that one of them has tattoos.

That brings us to the issue of stage magic, which is nominally what this movie is about.

Stage magic is an exciting and compelling art form, and there’ve been some fantastic movies that have used stage magic as a jumping off point. The problem with The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is it has absolutely no love or affection for magic. Indeed, it pretty much actively disdains it.

Magic is characterized as either cheesy or masochistic. There’s some lip service paid to it producing wonder and joy, but those emotions can hardly be seen in this trainwreck of a movie.

A comedy that actually championed how amazing well-done magic is could be both touching and funny, but this movie just uses it as fuel for mean-spirited gags.

Compounding this is that a lot of the so-called magic is shown in this movie is clearly the result of blatant special effects. Actual stage magic is really cool, but stage magic that’s simulated by camera tricks does a disservice to the art form and its practitioners, and cheapens what they do.

So, is there anything decent here? Well, Alan Arkin plays a good grouchy old magician, and Olivia Wilde puts in a performance as Burt’s assistant that’s far better than this movie deserves. Unfortunately, both are wasted on this dung heap, and the arc of Wilde’s character is actually pretty insulting.

To top everything off, the movie ends with a blatant metaphor for entertainers using and abusing their audiences.

I kid you not, before the credits roll, the makers of this film appear to want you to be fully aware of just how much you’ve been ripped off. Don’t give them the satisfaction. See another movie.

Posted by Bera B. Dunau on March 21, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Columns,Movie Reviews,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry