Movie Review: The Illusionist

The Illusionist has a lot to like about it and not just Edward Norton who's worth watching in everythiing he does (except Death to Smoochy which is unforgivable). Stage magic is just fun. Set it in Vienna around the turn of the (last) century and you have a nice Houdini feel. Add Paul Giamatti as a detective and you get even more fun. Rufus Sewell and Jessica Biel round out the cast as a prince and his future bride and you get to add a love triangle to the mix, even more fun.

But, it just wasn't fun. It was good, and I'm glad I saw it, but it wasn't fun. One problem is that Norton, Sewell and Biel all seem to have the weight of the world on their shoulders and there's no fun there. Giamatti is the only one not so burdened which is odd as he's the one character caught between the others. His everyman feel is welcome, but it also stands out from everything else in the film. If the other actors played it like Giamatti it would have been a lot more fun.

Oh and I found Rufus Sewell's mustache really distracting. it was probably real, because if it was fake it was the worst fake of all time, but that doesn't make it better.

Mustaches's aside, this is an intelligent film. The characters are all smart and do clever things. Obviously Norton sets up good illusions and both Sewell and Giamatti spend some time trying to figure them out. There's a real fun bit where Norton explains a trick to Giamatti. I wish there was a little more of that. The problem for me is that the plot was pretty obvious. Maybe not all the details and I had doubts at some points, but without giving away any plot points there were scenes where the illusion didn't work for me. It's like seeing how a magic trick is done during the trick.

Lost episodes are really character-driven stories instead of plot-driven which is one reason it advances so slowly. The Illusionist is the same. From the above you can figure out that it's really Giamatti's character that develops over the course of the story. His is the only character that goes through any growth and is troubled by any of the decisions he has to make. if the others were a little more fully realized and the plot a little more hidden and there was a little more magic, this would have been great instead of just good.