Sometimes Magical Yet Incredibly Uneven: Our Review of "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" (2013)

Directed By: Don Scardino (30 Rock) 

Starring: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, dangerous stunts, a drug-related incident and language

Run Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Synopsis: Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelton (Carell and Buscemi) are two of the most famous magicians on the Las Vegas Strip. After 10 years though, their show has become stale and their friendship strained, and when an outlandish street magician named Steve Gray (Carrey) comes along to make things worse, it causes Anton to quit the show and Burt loses his job. Resorting to being an entertainer at a retirement home, Burt meets his childhood hero, an old magician named Rance Holloway (Arkin), who combines with Burt's former assistant Jane (Wilde) and inspires Burt to rediscover why he became a magician in the first place.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Sarah and I are back from our hiatus now that, for all intents and purposes, I’m finished with this past season of college basketball and my schedule is about to open up. We apologize for the lack of content recently but we can assure you that we’re back and we’ll be coming out with our usual reviews and posts. We might even be able to start cranking out more columns like our New Year’s Resolutions said we would.

All of that said, we kicked off our return by catching a matinee showing of Steve Carell’s new comedy, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Carell stars as a Las Vegas magician named Burt Wonderstone…

Sarah: And Steve Buscemi (HBO’s Boardwalk Empire) plays his best friend and partner Anton Marvelton, but their show is getting old and stale and they’re in-fighting is tearing them apart.

Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi play off each other pretty well as "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone & Anton Marvelton," but this truly is Carell's movie for better and worse.

Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels Confirmed For "Dumb & Dumber" Sequel!

Hello readers, Andrew here. To be technical, yesterday was my actual birthday, but this news is one of the best belated birthday gifts ever!

In what has to be one of the greatest pieces of movie news I've ever heard, ComingSoon.net broke an exclusive story yesterday that Bobby and Peter Farrelly confirmed that Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels will be reprising their roles as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne in a sequel to 1994's Dumb & Dumber!


Carrey (left) as Lloyd Christmas in one of his breakout roles in 1994's Dumb & Dumber, with Jeff Daniels


The Farrelly Brothers are out promoting their new film The Three Stooges (which, in my opinion, looks absolutely horrible) and must have decided it was the best time to make their announcement for the long-awaited sequel.

After Peter Farrelly made it clear he and his brother had nothing to do with the atrocity that was Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, saying, "We did not do 'Dumb & Dumberer'. That was a studio thing," he explained why now was the time to make their sequel:

"(W)e've always wanted to do a sequel and finally Jim called up. Jeff always wanted to do it. We always wanted to do it. Jim was busy, but he called and said, 'We've got to do this thing again.' He had just watched 'Dumb & Dumber' and he said, 'This is the perfect sequel. Let's do it.'"

To further add to the awesomeness of this news, Farrelly added that production on the film starts later THIS YEAR, which means we could have the finished product as soon as 2013!

We'll continue to bring updates as we learn more about the production of this film, right here on Two Tickets For!

Editor's Note: Speaking of Jeff Daniels, he's starring in Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show The Newsroom, and the trailer for it hit the web yesterday. Daniels plays a news anchor who goes into a downward spiral and it looks exactly how I'd imagine an Aaron Sorkin show on HBO would look. Which is to say, pretty darn good. Check it out:



Fun Fact: Considering I have the original film as one of my Top Ten Favorite Films, that makes it TWO of my favorite films to have an official sequel announced within the last 4 days (Anchorman being the other)!