Typical Tricks: A “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” Review

Magic suddenly seemed cool when I watched this movie.

More than the plot and the characters, what really made me enjoy this film are the magic tricks they showcased. Okay, I know magic is so much easier to do through film because of the endless possibilities we could do with special effects, but as I was watching the movie I felt like a kid again, eagerly waiting for the next magic trick to be shown instead of focusing on the plot itself.

Given what I said above, you can probably guess by now that the plot wasn’t really something to look forward to:

Albert Wunderstein aka known as the Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and his partner Antony Mertz aka Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi), are bigshot magicians performing at the Aztec Casino in Las Vegas. With their act getting threatened by newcomer street magician Steve Gray(Jim Carrey. There are a lot of “Steves” in this movie, don’t you think?), Burt and Anton has to come up with a new trick. And with the help of Burt’s childhood inspiration Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), the duo tries to pull-off a trick they have never done before.

As you watch the movie you would already pretty much know how things would turn out, like if the lead gets the girl, how the conflict will be resolved, and ultimately how it will all end. Given the predictability of the plot, it’s a good thing that there are magic tricks involved in the story, as these are probably the only source of surprises that you will get. But then again, you went to the cinema to see a movie, not a magic show. The script and the characters were fun, but the story, not so much.

Inspite of the predictability, I have to say that I also had a few good chuckles when I was watching the film, and surprisingly more from Steve Carell than from Jim Carrey.  Burt Wondertone’s (the character) humor reminded me of Sheldon Cooper, and these are the kinds of wit that I like. He was both loveable and hateable as a spoiled magician, although the fun in the character started to dwindle as the movie progressed. Jim Carrey on the other hand was awesome and ridiculous as usual, and he never fails to upstage everyone else whenever he is in the scene. Although he is not able to bring the whole movie into his own level of awesomeness, he at least was able to save every scene that he is on. However, this is the same cartoonish, physically expressive Jim Carrey that we already know – nothing new with him here, really.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone in general, is passable to watch with friends and family (although some scenes may be a bit too squeamish for the kids), but personally this would be one of the movies that I would have in my stack of DVDs but would never really watch until I run out of other choices. My advice, don’t bother trying to catch this in the cinema. Watching it at home on DVD won’t be much of a difference.