The Incredible Burt WonderstoneMovie Reviews

Poster art for "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone."

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone Showtimes + Tickets

So-so

Avg. Critic Score: 44 out of 100 Mixed or average reviews Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

OK for kids 14+

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

75

San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle
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. Read full review
75

Chicago Sun-Times | Richard Roeper
This is also one dark and wickedly funny comedy. Read full review
67

Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman
The movie itself is too cautious and unimaginative to bring off what a great magic trick — or comedy — should do: make us laugh out loud with surprise. Read full review
50

The Hollywood Reporter |
Enjoyable but as familiar as the old-school routines its magician heroes dish out. Read full review
50

Boston Globe | Ty Burr
The hair is funny, in part, because not much else is. “Burt Wonderstone” is a lazy, underwritten imitation Will Ferrell movie. Read full review
50

USA Today | Claudia Puig
What might have been an entertaining, silly comedy opts for pseudo-earnestness over movie magic. Read full review
45

NPR | Mark Jenkins
There are some funny bits and characters around the edges of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, but its core is empty of humor. In fact, this purported satire of Las Vegas magicians is a three-void circus: the script, the central character and the main performance. Read full review
40

New York Daily News | Elizabeth Weitzman
Like a creaky Vegas act desperate to please, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is so eager you can’t help wanting to like it. But you also can’t help wondering if something better is playing in the theater next-door. Read full review
38

Rolling Stone | Peter Travers
Magicians have been pulling rabbits out of hats for ages. And yet, with all this talent, no one can make a decent script materialize. Read full review
10

Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern
Alan Arkin does the best trick, bringing a dollop of humanity to the role of Rance Holloway, the magician who was young Burt's inspiration. Apart from Rance, the whole production is slovenly nonsense, photographed on the cheap with blaring ghastliness. Yet it poses an intriguing mystery. Did the producers appeal to a denominator even lower than common by making their film as dumb as possible, or did it just turn out that way? Read full review

Metacritic link View more reviews for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone on Metacritic

Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says OK for kids 14+ Not enough magic to mostly unfunny Carell-Carrey comedy.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is heavy on scatological and sex humor, as well as cringe-inducing scenes of some Jackass-style stunts, but it doesn't veer completely into over-the-top raunch. Language includes one use of "f--k" and several of "s--t" and "a--hole." Main character Burt is known to bed a different woman from the audience every night; two humorous sex scenes feature bra-clad women and jokes about condom size. The violence is mostly self-inflicted by Burt's rival, a street magician who sleeps on burning coals, cuts his skin, asks to be punched, douses himself with pepper spray, and drills a hole in head -- among other things. And early scenes show a kid being bullied. If you dig under the Vegas-style humor, the two big takeaways are that friendship should be forever, and your career should be your passion, not just what you do for money.

Families can talk about why the dueling-magicians premise of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is funny. Have wild stunts taken away from the entertainment value of old-school magic?
Why do you think there aren't too many female magicians? Is Burt right that women aren't cut out to be magicians? Is Jane intended to be a role model? What about the male characters?
What does the difference between Burt's and Steve's styles say about the nature of entertainment? Is it inevitable that humor and magic are generational and not universal? Kids: Do you think things are funny that your parents don't like, and vice-versa?

The good stuff

Positive messages: Buried underneath the over-the-top Vegas humor are a couple of positive messages. One is that unconditional friendship should be just that -- unconditional, not based on fame or popularity. The other is that whatever you decide to do with your life should come from a sense of joy and passion, not because of the things it will buy you. Jane's love of magic also shows that women are capable of performing traditionally male-dominated forms of entertainment. And the movie promotes the joy of enjoying the childlike wonder of magic tricks.
Positive role models: Jane isn't interested in simply being a magician's assistant; she wants to be a full magician. Rance Holloway explains that being a magician is about providing a sense of awe and wonderment, not going through the motions for a big paycheck. Anton is a great (and in many ways, only) friend to Burt, but Burt is a jerk to him until he realizes the error of his ways.

What to watch for

Violence: The violence is mostly self-inflicted by magician Steve Gray, whose "street magic" includes dangerous, don't-try-this-at-home stunts like burning himself with a lighter, forcing someone to punch him in the face, cutting open the swelling from a wound, sleeping on burning coals, and drilling a hole in his skull. An early scene includes a child being bullied and punched. A couple of scenes of animals in peril.
Sexy stuff: Two comedic sex scenes in which women are shown wearing bras and underwear and making out with Burt in bed. Burt has a tradition of picking a woman out of the audience (based on how attractive she is) to help with a trick and then taking her back to his suite to have sex. Burt brags about his quadruple-king bed which can fit "at least" a dozen people. In one of the two sex scenes, Burt and Jane do magic tricks and joke about condoms (she makes a bag of Trojans appear out of nowhere, and he replaces it with Magnum XLs).
Language: One "f--k," as well as several uses of "s--t," "a--hole," "hell," "ass," "crap," "bitch," "damn," "oh my God," "goddamn," and the possibly offensive (faux) TV show title Brain Rapist. Other insulting/demeaning language.
Consumerism: Many Las Vegas hotels are featured or mentioned, as are Big Lots, Bounty, and Trojan and Magnum XL condoms.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Adults drink in a few scenes; in one, Burt gets visibly drunk.

Common Sense Media An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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