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Canberra Today 16°/19° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ (M) ***

THIS film, set in the milieu of magic as a performance attraction, is the debut in the grown-up, big-screen world of director Don Scardino and writer Jonathan Goldstein after careers in network TV.

As melodramatic comedy, it’s okay. As an exposé of the secrets of conjuring, sleight-of-hand, illusion and prestidigitation, however you wish to describe it so long as you don’t call it magic, it skates over the surface. Cinema can deliver visual fakery better than live performance can.

Burt (Steve Carell) and Antony (Steve Buscemi) found common cause at primary school through their love of magic tricks learned from a mail-order kit from Holloway (Alan Arkin).

For a decade they have performed to a slowly but inexorably declining audience at Doug Munny’s (James Gandolfini) Las Vegas casino hotel. Munny is the name, money is his game. And he’s about to dump Burt and Anton, whose childhood friendship is in tatters after emergence of irreconcilable differences partly caused by Jane (Olivia Wilde) their attractive stage assistant.

To replace them, Doug has engaged Steve (Jim Carrey), whose act involves self-harm on a grand scale overshadowed by the dimensions of his ego.

Working out how Don and Jonathan resolved that list of the film’s issues poses no great intellectual challenge. Numerous defects do nothing to reinforce the plot’s credibility. Can we forgive them? Buscemi, Arkin and Gandolfini give performances more satisfying than their billing justifies. At best, the film offers escape rather than magic.

At Dendy and Palace

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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