Thursday 21 March 2013


 
THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE
 
 
As many of my friends know, i am a HUGE Jim Carrey fan and also am a fan of Steve Carell with my favourite Carrey film being Ace Ventura : Pet Detective closely followed by Liar Liar. Whilst my favourite Steve Carell film is The 40 Year Old Virgin closely followed by his hilarious performance as Brick Tamland in Anchorman. However, this film is nowhere near the quality of any of those mentioned films and in my opinion is a colossal failure, but i will explain why i feel this way. The plot is very simple, you have your two friends Burt Wonderstone {Carell} and Anton Marvelton {Steve Bushemi}, 2 school friends who when a very young Burt gets a magic set for his birthday and after impressing Anton with his skills, form a partnership to one day become huge stars in the magic industry. Many years pass and they do just that, they make it huge in the famous Las Vegas strip, perfoming every night for years to packed out theatres and amaze thousand with their routines along with their assistant Jane {Olivia Wilde} and things couldn't go any better. After a while though, people start losing interest in their routines and slowly the numbers diminish, couple that with Wonderstones lack of enthusiasm and out of control ego, their show loses its spark as the crowd want something more daring and "in your face". Whilst walkiing along the strip after a nights performance they see a large crowd gathered around a street magician name Steve Gray {Jim Carrey} who is exactly what the people want, he's more of a David Blaine, Cris Angel kind of magician than the traditional performers like Wonderstone & Marvelton. After Gray wows the crowd with a funny "card trick" the two realise they have competition as Gray is soon hailed as the future of magic.The rest of the film is a battle for the top spot between Wonderstone & Marvelton against Gray and try to out do each other. I won't go any further into the plot as i don't want to spoil anything for people who are interested in going to see this but quite honestly i don't think there will be alot of eager people going to see this one, its awful and i'm disappointed to say that guys but it is. Steve Carells character comes across as a total egomaniac, which for the most part of the movie is meant to be that way, but when he has his moment where he realises that he has to see the error of his ways {which seems to happen alot in movies these days} and that only happens when Burt and Antons friendship becomes immensely strained, i didn't care by that point and it felt forced to me personally. In my honest opinion, this film is only tolerable when Jim Carrey is on screen, and he is only a side character in all fairness and even some of his parts got old very quickly. There are a couple of good cameos in this film though and you may enjoy that. This supposed "comedy" is far from one, the jokes seem to fall flat near enough every time and even with the talent they have in this film they were given a script that is not worthy of their humour. I have to say this is one of the most disappointing comedies ive seen in a long time and cannot see this being a box office success as it's just not funny in my opinion. I would only recommend this if you are a die hard Jim Carrey fan and even then i don't think you would get your moneys worth. In the cinema where i went to see the film, there was only 7 of us in there, and with 30 minutes to go, i was the only one left watching it! Maybe they had more sense than me on this occasion.
 
 
Rating - 3/10
 
 
Positives - Jim Carrey, Steve Bushemi, 2 short but sweet cameos
 
Negatives - Jokes fell flat, Steve Carells character was too annoying, simply was not funny
 
 
Thanks again guys for reading this review, please check out my other reviews and hopefully you enjoy them aswell as this one and i will upload a new review very soon :}


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