When we reach the contemporary epoch, Burt is a bronzed and preening creep with a penumbra of oddly hued, stylist-baked hair – it’s a genuinely unsettling portrayal of a certain variety of chemically preserved stardom, which makes it difficult to accept his sudden reinvention as a real person. Some viewers may suspect that Carell and Buscemi, who plays Burt’s sweaty but commonsensical sidekick, Anton Marvelton, overdo the homophobic and/or homoerotic stage patter or the atrocious dance steps set to Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra.” But if you’ve ever actually seen a Vegas stage show, you’ll recognize the production values as being way too close to the real thing. There are plenty of easy and genuine laughs early on, as we watch one-time nerd-boy Burt become a creature of clueless grandeur, with a leonine mane and a jumpsuit out of Elvis’ nightmares, during the Johnny Carson era. Stay a full hour, though, and you’re stuck in a death spiral of unfunniness as all the outrageous charm of the generational conflict between Carell’s Burt Wonderstone, a David Copperfield-style Vegas superstar, and Carrey’s upstart street magician Steve Gray (aka “the Brain Rapist”) gradually leaks out like the sticky red goo from a punctured cruise-ship dessert. Here’s what it is: This is a really lively, fun and high-spirited comedy. There’s also something to be said for “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” which stars arguably the most well-liked comic actor in Hollywood and also has juicy supporting roles for Steve Buscemi and one-time comedy box-office champ Jim Carrey. But there’s still something to be said for boring, old-fashioned notions of quality and execution, such as not making your character transformation and happy ending seem careless and tacked-on and irredeemably stupid. Storytelling mostly is not about originality or surprise, and it’s no big secret that the audience likes it if the hero is redeemed and gets the girl in the end. (As others have observed, this describes every hit movie of Will Ferrell's career.) Anyway, if I sound like I’m focusing on the idea of originality, I realize that’s missing the point. Is this really what the audience wants? A deliriously unhinged setup and larger-than-life characters, abruptly devolving into a mind-numbingly familiar story with a totalitarian happy ending? No, wait – don’t answer that. But when those same tendencies get forced through the Hollywood sausage maker, as in the new Steve Carell vehicle “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” it generally comes out as a sentimental and highly conventional tale of fall and redemption, with all the so-called narrative beats in the so-called right place. Isn’t it time to talk about the weirdly divided soul of American comedy? In what we might call the post-“Seinfeld” era – the era of “South Park” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Office” and “Girls” - American comedy has become increasingly absurdist, anarchic, unpredictable and even confrontational in the half-hour television format.
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