Uninspired is probably the best word for this movie. It was directed by
Don Scardino a name you probably do not recognize. This is his first movie
although according to IMDB he has done quite a lot of work directing all sorts
of Television series, 30 Rock most
notably. His style is barely
noticeable and I won’t mention him anymore in this review. The movie has four
writers. They include Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen,
Tyler Mitchell. I would not be surprised if there were even more writers than
that as the movie has the feel of something put together by committee and by
that it is overly broad story within a fill-in-the-blank structure and devoid
of uniqueness or creativity. Here, I am going to describe the story very
briefly: It is about the redemption of a once successful traditional Vegas
magician, Steve Carell, who has fallen on hard times because of his egomania
and the appearance of a new type of stuntman magician, a la David Blaine. The
magician with the help of his beautiful assistant reconnects with his childhood
inspiration and stages a comeback. There is a contest at the end where he
out-magics the competition. The End.
Does that sound familiar to you? Well, it should. It is a marketing
pitch for a movie you have already seen before, perhaps something starring Will
Ferrell and concerning sports. I bet this movie was green-lit for production
before it was even written. The
studio got a room of writers together, gave them that paragraph pitch, and
ordered a PG-13 script written. The result is a movie that very much feels like
it did not need to be made and in a way wasn’t made by anybody in particular.
It’s nobody’s movie.
I think the telling clue here is the lack of any decent magic in the
movie. None. The best tricks we see are some sleight of hand that barely
conceal the fact that Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, his childhood inspiration
and now ex-magician, did not even bother to learn sleight of hand in
preparation for their roles. There are easy cuts that allow one to recognize it
is not their hands much like the way one can tell people in movies hardly ever
really play the piano. The movie has a cop out reason for this and that has to
do with Burt Wonderstone, Carell, and his partner Anton Marvelton, played by
Steve Buscemi, being worn out has been magicians that have not changed their
act in ten years. Yeah, but even ten years ago they must have had a decent
trick in order to get famous in the first place. You would think we would see
something of interest at some point. It never happens.
Now consider the character of Burt Wonderstone himself. His main
personality trait is being bored. He takes very little joy in his work, has lost
all feelings of brotherhood for his long-time partner, and goes through the
routine of seducing groupies as if it is something he feels his status requires
even if he does not particularly enjoy it. Truly this is Steve Carell’s least
inspired character so far. I would like to draw your attention to one particular
failed joke. Burt Wonderstone has been fired from his big Vegas job because his
act is terrible and has been informed by his agent that he has no money because
he has made nothing but terrible choices. So he is now broke and living in a
motel. His assistant, played by Olivia Wilde, comes over to check up on him out
of the niceness of her heart. As they are talking, she mentions her own
aspirations of becoming a magician in her own right. Burt thinks this notion is
silly. Why she asks. “Because,” he states, “you are a woman.” Now true this is
misogynistic, but it is also lazy and stupid and those qualities are what I
really want to talk about. There is no particular reason for Burt Wonderstone
to be misogynistic. I have never heard of a glass ceiling in the world of
magic. This isn’t like Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman” where the story was about a
news team boy’s club being invaded by a female news anchor. In this movie, it
just seems to be there because this movie’s story structure is based off other
casually misogynistic movies and so a casually misogynistic main character was
just another box on the checklist. Nobody bothered to ask whether the character
or plot required Burt Wonderstone to not respect women or put in any sort of
effort to make the joke anything more than simply a demeaning comment about
women in general. You can, I argue, make fun of a woman. I’m not saying you
should not do that, but the joke should have some logical connection to the
woman who is the object of ridicule. That brings us to another inexplicable
problem.
This is a comedy and like so many other comedies has not hired a
comedian for the main female role. The assistant is played by Olivia Wilde, who
is not funny. At all. Does not even try. What is she doing in this movie? All she
does is look like Olivia Wilde, sit there passively as Burt Wonderstone insults
her, and make out with him at the end. Would it kill the makers to cast a
comedian who could adlib a couple funny lines where the all male writers were
limited in their imagination as to what a woman character could say? It would
have been really easy. For instance they hired the very funny Gillian Jacobs
from the TV show “Community” for a bit part in this movie. In that bit part she
got more laughs than Wilde did in the entire movie. Let’s say 1 to 0. Why on
earth couldn’t she be cast as the assistant? I mean she isn’t a supermodel like
Olivia Wilde, but she sure isn’t ugly either. Did nobody think about this
possibility?
To be fair, there is one thing that transcends the rote nature of this
movie and that is the performance of Jim Carrey as the David Blaine-ish
magician named Steve Gray. Steve Gray is not really a magician as much as he is
a performer of ridiculous acts of self-immolation. In one particular trick he
doesn’t go to the bathroom for a straight week. That was pretty funny. Jim
Carrey, now 50 years old, and no longer a box office draw (i.e. without studios
developing entire movies devoted to his unique brand of comedy) has done the
smart thing and started showing up in digital shorts, hosting Saturday Night Live,
and taking supporting roles that allow him to still put in superior work. I
mean he could be doing the Eddie Murphy thing and keep insisting on being the
lead role in inferior movies, each one worse than the one before. This movie
isn’t that good but Jim does turn his fifteen minutes of screen time into
consistent laughs. I think what we really need is a movie based on or just with
the cast of “In Living Color.” That would be something else.
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