The world of professional magic is so inherently ludicrous that it makes for an easy comedic target, but not even an assemblage of top-tier talent could prevent The Incredible Burt Wonderstone from falling into a critical and commercial abyss.
Helmed by Don Scardino from a script by Horrible Bosses and future Vacation, Game Night, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the A-list ensemble boasted comedy heavyweights Jim Carrey and Steve Carrel alongside Olivia Wilde, Steve Buscemi, Alan Arkin, James Gandolfini, and more.
The plot found a pair of warring magicians trying to one-up and outdo each other at every turn, with Carrel’s more traditionalist title hero vehemently opposed to Carrey’s maverick street trickster Steve Gray. While you would expect the reunion of Bruce Almighty co-stars to generate plenty of belly laughs, there was barely a chuckle to be found in Burt Wonderstone.
Instead, the film was roundly shunned by critics and almost completely ignored by paying customers, with the $34 million production failing to even recoup its budget at the box office. It hasn’t even sniffed anything approaching cult favorite status in the decade since, either, but the lure of big names can often be enough to resurrect even the most forgotten of duds from streaming obscurity.
To that end, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has indulged in some on-demand sleight of hand over the weekend, with FlixPatrol outing the major missed opportunity and exercise in how to turn top-notch parts into a tedious whole winding up as one of the biggest hits on iTunes around the world.