Directed by Don Scardino
(PG-13)
**
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“Jim Carrey kills it every time he shows up” in this half-hearted comedy, said Mike Russell in the Portland Oregonian. Unfortunately, Carrey’s “masochistic slapstick” is delivered in a supporting role here, and everything else in the film “exists firmly in Carrey’s shadow.” As a Las Vegas magician whose egotism is killing his act and stage partnership, “the normally on-the-ball” Steve Carell simply flounders. Where Will Ferrell would have played the role with perfect “clueless, brainless” confidence, Carell can’t find that note or stick with another, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. James Gandolfini, Alan Arkin, and Olivia Wilde do what they can with smaller roles, but not even Carrey’s energetic turn as a radical street magician can salvage this “thin, sour” stab at light entertainment. Still, even a “fitfully funny” mainstream comedy “feels like a veritable breath of spring” after winter’s commercial dreck, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. Accept Burt Wonderstone for what it is: “a convergence of very funny actors” who each get a few good moments.
