Burt Wonderstone an established old school magician splints from his longterm stage partner Anton Marvelton after a new street magician steals their thunder. Burt then spends time with his boyhood idol and rekindles his passion for magic and why he started it in the first place.
Review
Burt starts magic to get away from the school bullies as everyone loves a magician. So he teams up with Anton and together they form a partnership and more importantly a friendship over the next 30 years. After 30 years years of partnership the relationship starts to fall apart with Burt having become a self obsessed egotistical prima donna thinking he is gods gift to women and to entice them he has the largest....bed in town. He doesn't even speak to Anton at any other time than during the show. Especially after performing the same show for 10 years in Las Vegas. Enter the stage of the street magician Steve Gray played by Jim Carrey who is a different kind of magician. New school where it is not enough to trick but to endure in reality the trick.
Faced with being thrown out of their Las Vegas home, Burt and Anton try to reinvent themselves as Nu magicians by doing a daring box trick of sitting in a box for 7 days. Unfortunately Burt is old school and too pompous and arrogant to learn a new trick. The act does not go well and Burt and Anton fall out. Leaving the Brain rapist Steve Gray to move in on their patch.
The premise of old and new school magicians battling out should have made this a wonderful silly film with lots of opportunities of ridiculing the new school dour melodramatic seriousness with Steve Gray playing a David Blaine like character. Whilst the old school of being glitzy hammy and fake tan and big hair of Burt and Anton a la Siegfried and Roy like but without the tigers. The potential of an Anchorman like film of silliness was here. Unfortunately there are no real laugh out loud moments and all the humour is pleasant polite titter. There is no bang and pizazz. The film is all set in the real world and no surreal moments unless you count the cameo of David Copperfield.
Alan Arkin plays Rance Holloway. The person who inspired Burt to take up magic where Burt encounters Rance in an old peoples home. Alan Arkin steals the show and the best bit is when he makes himself disappear from a hospital bed. Olivia Wilde is not really given much to do and like all magicians assistant is there to look pretty and let the magician get on with deceiving the audience.
Jim Carrey plays his character well with his mock sincerity of the new school magician with very little face contortion until his appropriate end. Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi give likeable performances. Whilst James Gandolfini give a James Gandolfini performance.
This is a safe pleasant film with no real gross out moments and a few laughs. It leaves the audience wanting more but you leave disappointed and wonder why the film was given top billing. There should have been a flash and a bang. All you get is a lighter and a fizz.
5/10
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