Magical? Not really. Funny? Often

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone conjures up laughs.
Silly, sloppy and totally lacking in trenchancy, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has something richer comedies often lack -- a decent supply of laughs.

Steve Carell joins forces with Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin and James Gandolfini for a comedy about a couple of fading magicians (Carell and Buscemi) who have overstayed their welcome as Las Vegas headliners.
In their prime, Burt Wonderstone (Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) were good enough to have a hotel theater named for them, but they've stagnated: Their act hasn't changed in years.

The movie opens with a nice little prologue in which two geeky elementary school kids form an alliance built around magic. It all starts when young Burt is given a magic set for his birthday. Rance Holloway's Magic Kit transforms his life, stimulating him to learn a variety of rudimentary tricks. He thinks magic will enhance his popularity.

Burt and Anton grow up to conquer Las Vegas, where they work for a hotel owned by Gandolfini's Doug Munny, whose name signals his undisguised capacity for greed.

Director Don Scardino (of 30 Rock fame) may not be the greatest of stylists, but what he lacks in visual chops, he makes up for by giving the movie an affable and sometimes dippy spirit.

The story's principal development involves the introduction of another magician, Carrey's Steve Gray. Gray, who becomes an instant rival for Burt and Anton, doesn't exactly do magic tricks. Rather than creating illusions, he puts himself through a series of physical tortures -- like spending a night screaming on a hot bed of coals. He's his own reality show.

The complex illusions cooked up by Burt and Anton seem passe when compared to Gray's death-defying stunts, which -- the movie suggests -- are precisely what a thrill-hungry public craves.

A bewigged Carrey -- he looks a little like Fabio on a bad day -- brings his customary intensity to the role of a crazed performer; it's a one-note performance, but the note is so strikingly manic, it almost sustains itself for the entire movie.

The script may be trying to for a bit of satirical edge with Carrey's character, but members of the pretension police can relax: No one's likely to accuse The Incredible Burt Wonderstone of trying to make any kind of statement.

Carell begins the movie as a self-absorbed, womanizing egoist with long hair, the biggest bed in Vegas, a tan that looks as if it came out of a bottle and an act so transparently showy, it borders on self-parody. Carell smartly tones down his performance as the movie progresses, bringing a little normalcy (and a better haircut) to his portrayal. He also picks up a love interest (Olivia Wilde) along the way.

Buscemi mostly plays second fiddle to Carell as the beleaguered Anton. Not surprisingly, the partnership between Burt and Anton becomes increasingly shaky, slipping into its final collapse with a disastrous trick called "The Hot Box." Eager to compete with Gray, the two suspend themselves in a class cage and wait for the Vegas sun to fry their brains.

Once he's on his own, Burt's career founders. He's eventually reduced to working assisted living facilities. At one such facility, he meets the aging Rance, who long ago abandoned his career as a magician. Burt and Rance develop a friendship that helps revive both their spirits.

It hardly needs to be said that Arkin fulfills his comic obligations with sarcasm, rue and what -- in this movie -- passes for wisdom.

The movie doesn't do much with other supporting characters. Jay Mohr (as the wonderfully named Rick the Implausible) adds little, to cite one example.

Of course, the movie builds toward the inevitable reunion and resurgence of the Wonderstone/Marvelton act, arriving at its destination in awkward but funny fashion.

It's possible that The Incredible Burt Wonderstone will become little more than a footnote in the careers of a lot of talented folks, but it's an amusing footnote -- and that counts for something.

And the rest of my week

JIM CARREY IN AN UPDATING OF A 1938 STORY

For reasons that I can't explain -- even to myself -- I decided to attend an advance Saturday morning screening of Mr. Popper's Penguins, a kid-oriented comedy starring Jim Carrey. Yes, the same Jim Carrey who broke onto the big screen talking out his ass in Ace Ventura Pet Detective, but who has shown plenty of versatility in recent years. *** Based on a 1938 book by Richard and Florence Atwater, Mr. Popper centers on an ambitious father who's separated from his wife. He's also too busy making killings in New York real estate to be much of a dad. *** Everything changes for Carrey's Mr. Popper when his adventurer father passes away and sends him a half dozen penguins. Much of the comedy involves the way Mr. Popper tries to adapt his life to the penguins. It's no surprise that the birds ultimately contribute to the awakening of Popper's latent humanity. The good, if predictable, news: Popper re-establishes a relationship with his young son (Maxwell Perry Cotton), his recalcitrant teen-aged daughter (Madeline Carroll) and his former wife (Carla Gugino.*** The supporting cast includes Angela Lansbury as owner of New York's Tavern on the Green, a property that the charming but duplicitous Mr. Popper seeks to buy.*** Carrey has an amazing ability to modulate his comedy for a kid-friendly audience, and he can be engaging as a man who learns to love a variety of real and CGI penguins. *** Too bad the movie sends the wrong message in vilifying a zookeeper and penguin expert (Clark Gregg) who thinks that keeping penguins in an apartment is a mistake. Isn't it? Shouldn't a guy like this have been made into an example rather than a jerk? *** By the end of this tame but mildly amusing affair, you can look back fondly on such high points as the scene in which the penguins learn to take care of their bathroom business in Mr. Popper's toilet. Oh well, the penguins are appropriately cute, and at least they don't talk out their butts.

THE HORRORS OF THE RAPE OF NANKING

Director Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death is so obviously trying to make itself into a harrowing masterpiece that the movie loses some of its punch. Over-composed black-and-white images tend to cast an artistic pall over proceedings too horrific to need any compositional enhancement. *** Lu focuses on the 1937 siege by the Japanese of the city of Nanking. As a Chinese director, Lu takes a major risk, at times presenting developments from a Japanese point-of-view. --- Granted, the Japanese soldier on whom he focuses (Hideo Nakaizumi) is torn by the cruelties he witnesses, but many viewers may wonder how one soldier's tormented conscience can be compared with the massive suffering the Chinese experienced. *** To round out the picture, Lu adds additional moral complexity on the Chinese side. He introduces us to Mr. Tang (Fan Wei), a man who works for a Nazi (John Paisley) businessman who has developed real sympathy for the Chinese people and their culture. Tang believes an alliance with the German will protect his family from the japanese onslaught. *** The Rape of Nanking has been documented before, but the event offers limitless story-telling opportunities, and, at its best, City of Life and Death makes a powerful addition to the cinematic literature on injustice and suffering -- and also offers an amazing recreation of a badly ravaged city.

Jim Carrey compelling as a con man

Jim Carrey brings dynamo force to the story of a brilliant con man and the guy he loved.

Jim Carrey might be the closest we’ll ever get to a perpetual motion machine in movies. Carrey's irrepressible will seems to drive everything he does, but his high-beam energy and toothy smile serve seldom have served him better than in I Love You Phillip Morris, a movie based on the true story of con man Steven Russell.

During a criminal career that was most active during the ‘90s, Russell posed as an attorney and as a chief financial officer. He was caught a variety of times, and staged several escapes from prison. He evidently excelled at being a criminal and at sidestepping the consequences of his actions -- at least for a while.

Directors Glen Ficarra  and John Requa treat Russell’s story as a platform for energetic comedy, moving from scene-to-scene with hells-a-poppin’ fury. They give the movie a near-antic quality that both complements Carrey’s performance and obliterates thinking time for the audience. It’s almost as if Ficarra and Requa decided that Russell’s story was so intriguing, they had no reason to tack on thematic exclamation points.

Still, I Love You Phillip Morris is more than a con-man caper movie. It’s also a gay love story that blossoms during one of Steven’s prison sentences. In a Texas penitentiary, Steven meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), a sensitive southerner who looks to Steven for both love and protection.

Carrey and McGregor play a convincing duet. Phillip falls under Steven's spell, devoting most of his attention to his lover. Steven, on the other hand, juggles a cornucopia of activities – his life with Phillip, his various scams and lots of wanton spending.

None of this has anything to do with how the movie starts. When the movie opens, Steven -- working as a police officer at the time -- is living what appears to be a conventional life. He's married to a religious woman (Leslie Mann) with whom he has a daughter.

When Steven tells us about his gayness – in a narration that runs throughout the movie – he does so with zesty relish. He treats his gayness in breezy, by-the-way fashion. Like just about everything else in Steven’s life, his sexual orientation is presented as an in-your-face fact, not as an issue for judgment.

Steven either doesn’t see (or refuses to acknowledge that he sees) anything strained about announcing his gayness while he’s still married. And although, Steven often experiences bouts of panic when the police are closing in, he appears to be immune to either guilt or remorse – except perhaps in matters concerning Phillip.

A sense of infectious wildness pervades the material, which requires a generous appreciation of absurdity. If the movie had a mantra, it might go something like this: The world is loopy. Don't try to make sense of it.

I don’t know exactly what we learn from Steven’s story, but I do know that I Love You Phillip Morris moves in lively fashion and that Carrey has delivered a performance that amounts to a sustained act of daring. Not because he's playing a gay man, but because he's playing a character who does despicable things -- but usually without shame. It’s almost as if Steven’s so damn confident about his dynamism that he believes no one possibly could hold his criminality against him.