The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone arrives from 2013, a year when a studio comedy could still be about two men in sequined vests arguing in a Las Vegas showroom, and this one is exactly that. Steve Carell plays the titular illusionist, a man who has performed the same trick for a decade and grown insufferable about it. Steve Buscemi is his patient partner. Jim Carrey, lean and unnerving, plays a street magician who drills into his own skull for applause. The film is a broad, genial farce about relevance and ego, and it makes no attempt to be anything else.

On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is thin. The cast is white and comfortable, with Olivia Wilde as the sole woman of consequence, an assistant named Jane who wants to perform instead of being sawed in half. Her ambition registers as a mild running gag, not a thesis. A billionaire casino owner (James Gandolfini, in his final released performance) exists to cancel the show, and the film regards his wealth with the same mild shrug it gives everything else. The heroes want his contract. Nobody wants his head.

There is no racial commentary, no climate anxiety, no examination of the body, no interest in neurodivergence, and no romantic subtext between anyone of the same sex. Carrey's self-mutilating stunts are gross-out spectacle, not a diagnosis. The film's one moral, delivered by Alan Arkin's retired magician, is that wonder is nice and friendship is nicer, a message that has never offended a single ticket-buyer. It is a pleasant, forgettable comedy that lost money, and it will not be studied. Some films arrive to start arguments. This one arrived to fill a Saturday.