The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Wow. Well that was a disappointment. (But you know what's not disappointing? Voting in the user poll to your right! Please and thank you!)

You would think that a comedy with Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, and Steve Buscemi would actually have been...you know...funny. A deep part of me was kind of even hoping for a Zoolander-esque surprise. Travelling into the world of magicians has to be funnier than this doesnt it?

Apparently not because The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is not only unfunny, it's kinda bad, dumb, unnecessary...whatever you want to call it. And with a movie with this much star power, consider me VERY surprised.

I am not really sure where to start with where Burt Wonderstone went wrong, so I guess I will start where it went right. Particularly, Jim Carrey is pretty funny as the extreme magician, Steve Gray, who is somewhat of a Criss Angel spoof. I figure that his bits would have been funnier had the trailers not shown basically all but two of his stunts. I really thought that the movie would elaborate the tricks further past what I saw in the trailers, but nope, not really. Regardless, at this point in his career, Carrey is comedic royalty and it's great seeing him. Not to mention, Im sure he is going to absolutely steal the show in Kick Ass 2 come August. The other good thing about Burt Wonderstone is Olivia Wilde. She is so damn attractive that it is almost painful. I'm saying it right now: she is the prettiest actress in Hollywood presently (yes, even more than Blake Lively at this point). Her character is likable in the movie, but really, she is just there for eye candy although she does good with the script/part she is given. 

Jim Carrey is always funny...even when he is holding in
12 days of urine

Someday Olivia Wilde will be Olivia Rath,
or Olivia Wilde-Rath...or Olivia Rath-Wilde.
Whatever she prefers really.

Sadly, that's about all that Burt Wonderstone has going for it. Steve Carell's character is extremely unlikable for most of the movie and I am not sure I laughed at a single thing he said throughout the entire film. Steve Carell is best in awkward situations as seen in The Office and 40 Year Old Virgin. He is not funny as a d-bag magician because that's not who he is. Steve Buscemi feels horrendously out of place and also isn't funny. Many of the remaining cast such as James Gandolfini and Alan Arkin, are provided with terrible scripts. For example, could someone please explain to me why Alan Arkin was funnier in Argo, a movie about a very serious Iranian hostage crisis, than he was as an old magician in a comedic spoof film? In fact, I would say that the script is easily the movie's biggest fault. It just isn't funny. To be honest, its painfully unfunny. There were countless times throughout the film where a joke had just left the actor's lips, and I knew it, and the entire audience knew it, but no one laughed. And that's because it just wasn't funny.

1 of these 3 magicians made me laugh. Ill give you a hint:
it was the one with long hair

Steve Carell trying to escape his mediocre career
since his departure on The Office. Lets hope 
that Anchorman 2 is the key to escaping
that glass case of emotion!

Another issue that I had with Wonderstone is that I honestly just didn't care that much about the magician world. Whereas Zoolander made the world of male models seem far-fetched, stupid, and side-splittingly hilarious, Wonderstone focuses too much on its message, which apparently is the fact that "extreme" magic is taking over and magic needs to go back to the basics. Honestly, I didn't even know that this was a problem in the magician community. Are Criss Angel and whoever else does these extreme stunts even that relevant anymore? I think magic is all about your tricks. If you have a good trick that makes people rack their brain for "how did they do that!" then you have done your job. I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but long story short, I just didn't give a crap about the competition or overall plot in Wonderstone nor the message it had to say about the current state of the magic community.

I'll admit that I am being really harsh on Burt Wonderstone, but that's because I am angry. This is a film that had so much potential. Its cast is top-notch (I mean you have Jim Carrey for God's sake!) and on paper its premise sounds like it could be absolutely hilarious. But when you get a terrible script and a stupid story, this is what you get. At one point in the movie, Alan Arkin's aging magician says something to the effect that magic is that moment where you amaze people with something they weren't expecting.

If only The Incredible Burt Wonderstone could have been as magical!

Pros:

• It has a FEW funny moments. 75% of them include Jim Carrey and there isn't much show for him to steal, but I would say that he steals the show
• It actually started to win me over a bit with its final 20 minutes. It ends on a very high note and I would say that the during-credits-scene is probably the funniest
• Olivia Wilde. She at least gave me something to look at since I wasn't laughing
• No but seriously...Olivia Wilde

Cons:

• The script is atrocious. It was not written for its stars which is mind boggling to me since it has a ton of star power
• They gave away most of Jim Carrey's stunts in the trailers
• Apparently the magic community is undergoing a very large and real crisis of "extreme" magic taking over the more "classic" style of magic! I don't care about it in real life and I didn't care about it in the movie
• I really didn't expect much from this movie to start with because it was kind of flying under my radar, but seriously with this much potential, this effort is just really disappointing

Rath's Review Score: 3.5/10