It's a testament above all to comic branding — the commercial value of familiar, well-liked names and faces. But with "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" as the latest example, these days we're often dealing with a certain kind of formulaic star-driven screen comedy, one that squeaks by with an audience and becomes, by profit standards, a hit.
Even though it's a miss.
Now: Why begrudge anyone out for a few cheap laughs for seeing the new Steve Carell comedy this weekend? Carell has made a home for himself on screen the hard way and, I think, the most durable way: first by sidling into the action by way of supporting roles, such as Brick Tamland, weatherman and dolt extraordinaire in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," then in leading roles, beginning with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." People like Carell: He's versatile but approachably himself, or himself-enough, and has a way of adjusting his performance to find the right tone. Even when the material's wrong.
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"The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" is an idea without a movie. A Vegas magic duo, played by Carell and Steve Buscemi, is torn apart by bickering and ennui before finding its mojo again. Jim Carrey is also in the film, playing Burt and Anton's competition, an edgy, nasty, pain-based street performer on the rise, constantly upping the grotesque antics for the benefit of his reality-TV series cameras.
Sounds promising on paper. So why does "Burt Wonderstone" join a list of recent comedies as disparate as "Due Date" (Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis) and Carell's own "Dinner for Schmucks" in falling flat? (For the record: "Due Date" was a hit; "Schmucks," not.)
The answers lie in what's on the page, and how a director chooses to film a joke, a two-person conversation, a kick in the 'nads — all these things are important. The hallmark of "Due Date," like the first two "Hangover" smashes, is found in its ill-advised rough edge and grotty, grim texture. It looks like an R-rated action movie, and only a little bit like an R-rated action comedy. Comic realism, I suppose you'd call it, in the service of ridiculous and often vicious behavior guided by one awful character's contempt for a stupider but nicer one.
Ramming the camera in the performers' faces, and cutting straight and bluntly to a close-up of a Taser in the groin, may pull a laugh from an audience. (There's no Taser-related joke in "Burt Wonderstone," and Alan Arkin's in it. So that's two plusses.) But are all laughs equal before the law of comedy?
Watch the Will Ferrell skating comedy "Blades of Glory" sometime. Like "Burt Wonderstone" it's a movie about an egotistical chump and his more sensitive partner. The lout must be humbled in order to become a better person, on and off stage (or the rink). The jokes in "Blades of Glory" are uneven but the directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck know what they're doing. They take the time to design a chain-reaction sight gag, for example, so that it plays out in a single take, rather than chop-chop-chop, the easy, fragmented way, for joke-killing "emphasis." The absurdly violent spectacle in "Blades of Glory" of the deadly Iron Lotus routine, which leads to a decapitation, works because it takes place in long shot. It's funnier than way.
"Burt Wonderstone" director Don Scardino, who has done scads of series television, is required to film scenes such as the bickering illusionists spilling out of a Plexiglass cube high above the pavement. It's as if Scardino didn't have a single clear or witty idea regarding how to build, pace, develop and executive these few seconds of screen time. It's a mess.
The global success of "The Hangover" and its sequel (No. 3 is coming) has encouraged producers and directors to think low, and mean. Which I love in comedy, the right comedy. Life isn't all "The Philadelphia Story" or warm intentions. But "Burt Wonderstone" is all pain, and no gain. Carell looks tense and uncomfortable. Buscemi overdoes it, and his material (he's the butt of all the ugly-guy jokes) is humiliating. Carrey's timing is strangely AWOL, though in the one-joke sequence featuring his character attempting to nap on burning-hot coals, it magically reappears, his cries of pain nicely spaced in between fake-snores.
We shouldn't expect (or want) all screen comedies to be shot in a brisk, breezy, dry, semi-documentary style, the way of "30 Rock" or "The Office." (Scardino was a "30 Rock" directorial veteran; on "The Office" Carell managed to keep his character fresh and vibrantly offensive, season after season.) A comedy like "Burt Wonderstone" is designed to be broader, and bigger. But bigger can end up smaller. Even with Carell and his primo colleagues returning, I worry a little about the "Anchorman" sequel later this year. Great talent breeds high expectations.
Sometimes, a comic actor in a position of power in Hollywood does well to focus on how to get back to the funny without all the effects, or the action-movie tropes some producer somewhere once said "the people expect." Also, the golden rule: There's only chance to fashion a screenplay that doesn't rely primarily on the talents of the performers to squeak by.
mjphillips@tribune.com
@phillipstribune
