Movie Reviews: "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone


“Incredible Blunderstone” is what the New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick calls The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, starring Steve Carell and Jim Carrey (although Carrey clearly has a supporting role).

The two play magicians “but there’s little magic and nothing incredible about this sloppy (if elaborately produced) comedy,” Lumenick writes.





Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times asks:

“Calling it The Mildly Diverting Burt Wonderstone would have been more accurate, but how many tickets is that going to sell?”





Referring to the two months of “midwinter drek” that have preceded the movie’s release, Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post suggests that it may benefit from the fact that audiences may by now “mistake mediocrity for genuine merit.”

“Burt Wonderstone is a generic, fitfully funny mainstream comedy that doesn’t nearly get the best from its name-brand players but doesn’t qualify as a desecration, either.”





Peter Howell in the Toronto Star writes:

“You just wish you could wave a wand or snap your fingers to undo the waste of talent and to straighten out the muddled and just plain nasty narrative.”





The handful of near-positive reviews focus on the performance of Jim Carrey, who, says Stephen Holden in the New York Times:

“steals every scene in which he appears.”





Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times writes:

“Welcome back, Hilarious Jim Carrey. We’ve missed you!”





Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle sums up:

“The movie is pleasant. It’s reasonably funny. But the one who gets the real laughs here, the hard laughs, is Carrey, who plays the kind of role he should be playing – - a complete lunatic. Forget lovable. Carrey doesn’t need to be loved. With his particular gift, he should just play an array of lunatics and let lovable take care of itself.”

-IMDB News