An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a decent cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, eventually, even if the damned thing had some potential, it turned out to be rather weak, I’m afraid. The first issue was that, even if the opening scene with these 2 boys becoming best friends after discovering they both love magic tricks was promising, within 5 minutes, it was pretty much ruined by the fact that, as adults, they couldn't stand each other anymore. From this point on, Burt Wonderstone became just so lame and annoying. To make things worse, during the 3rd act, they completely flipped around again this character as he suddenly became aware that he had been a major douchebag for so many years. Basically, his personality kept changing drastically any time it was needed to move on the plot. Concerning the rest of the characters, it was not much better, I’m afraid. For example, it was sad to see the lovely and talented Olivia Wilde playing such a thankless and eventually rather boring character. Concerning Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey and James Gandolfini, their characters were slightly more interesting and/or fun but they were not developed enough. Eventually, the only one who managed to be entertaining was Alan Arkin. To be honest, Arkin did deliver his usual no-nonsense performance he gives in pretty much all his movies but, in the contrary of the rest of the cast, he did manage to find the right tone. Indeed, he was the only one who seemed to be an actual person and not some kind of annoying heightened caricature. Anyway, to conclude, even if I have seen worse, I didn’t care much about the damned thing and I don’t think it is really worth a look.