After leaving NBC’s “The Office” Steve Carell pursues his movie career further and adds another successful comedy to his long list of great movies, but the Incredible Burt Wonderstone wasn’t as great as I had expected.
Burt grows up with only one friend and his Rance Holloway magic set but with practice he becomes one of the most successful Las Vegas magic acts. His show however depletes in excitement when a rival magician Steve Gray begins a street show that takes away the fans of Burt. So he and his partner Anton try to regain fans by doing a stunt similar to Gray’s by staying in a “hot box” over the Las Vegas strip for a week.
Their stunt fails miserably and Burt must regain his career with the help of his assistant Jane and his childhood role model Rance Holloway. Burt becomes more humble and realizes that magic is about the audience not the magician. To try and win over an act at the newest hotel and casino in Las Vegas they must compete against the best magicians including Steve Gray.
After watching Carell in many of my favorite movies such as “Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Dinner for Schmucks” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” I thought that I would be laughing out loud throughout the new movie. However, I only found myself cracking up a few times.
Regardless of the movie failing to meet my high expectations, as a whole it was worth the $7.25 I paid because of the nice plot and funny one liners.
The acting by Steve Carell was comical. Steve Carell provided “potty humor” that always makes me laugh in all of his movies, but to others that could be considered immature or just stupid. Like his other movies it isn’t what he says that is so funny, it is how he says it.
Jim Carrey had plenty of slapstick and facial expressions that are always funny. A lot of the movie he was doing magic that included him hurting himself on purpose to try and gain viewers. My favorite one of his magic stunts was when he didn’t pee for two weeks and everyone thought that he was going to explode from “holding it in.”
Steve Buscemi filled in his role as a main character which he doesn’t often do. In his past movies he has played background roles with funny lines but I think that he stepped it up for this movie and had some funny lines also.
The special effects in the play were done well and they were believable. Jim Carrey’s character had to cut his cheek open and on multiple other occasions had to pretend to burn himself. The magical stunts that Burt and Anton performed had to have been made by special effects as well considering that Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi are not professional magicians.
The movie had me laughing but again I wouldn’t say it had met my expectations. It was worth my time and money so I was happy with how it went overall. I would recommend it to fans of comedies.
