Merrick again…
Middleborn was kind enough to send in this review of THE ILLUSIONIST.
Regular AICN readers know that this is one of two “magician” movies presently cueing up for release, the other being THE PRESTIGE.
Many folks are ripping on poor ILLUSIONIST, whose trailer evokes a History Channel dramatization as far as I'm concerned. You can grab a look at the trailer HERE & decide for yourself.
Thanks go out to Middleborn for his write-upl; he went out of his way “to avoid all memory altering activities before the movie” -- a sacrifice not to be taken lightly.
Here’s Middleborn…
WARNING! MIDDLEBORN MAY PULL HEAVY(ISH) SPOILERS OUT OF HIS......HAT!!!
I saw an early screening of "The Illusionist" with my girlfriend last night, and although we don't totally disagree on what we think of the movie, it certainly isn't horrible.
When I first saw the trailer for this movie about 2 or 3 weeks back, I thought it was really interesting. I wondered how much time they would spend showing off magic tricks, which, let's be frank, isn't that exciting knowing that everything was going to be CGI. I only recently watched a few episodes of "Criss Angel: Mind Freak" and am blown away by how he makes these impossible things look real, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking. “How naive can I be that I can't figure out how he does it?”
Since this movie is set in "turn-of-the-century Vienna", it is easy to see that people in that time period would be fooled by the simplest of magic tricks. As a viewer of the movie, you begin to wonder if Ed Norton's character "Eisenheim" is a really good magician, or just really a wizard. And then you wonder, “Is this movie any good?”
The movie is narrated by Paul Giamatti's character, Chief Inspector Uhl. I'm not very good at doing accents or knowing which one's are which (NEVER get an Ozzie & a Kiwi mixed up!) but I think it's safe to say that ALL the characters in this movie took the easy route of using "European" accents. Aside from that Giamatti gives the best performance by far. I haven't seen "Lady in the Water" yet, and I doubt I will soon, but Giamatti gives a solid performance here.
Ed Norton is "haunting" and "mysterious" and really, there wasn't that much to his character I thought. I feel as though Norton is heads above anyone in movies right now, in terms of talent (Johnny Depp's up there, too), and I feel as though this movie was a paycheck. He doesn't slack, but, it wasn't anything special.
Jessica Biel passes as Princess Sophie. Again, nothing really special. What I did like was that I didn't think of her as Jessica Biel, not really because of her acting, but more because they didn't sexualize the character and she wasn't over the top trying to prove herself. Rufus Sewell plays the Crown Price Leopold, who is?obviously the villain. Pretty 2 dimensional. And, what a bad fake mustache.
What really helped was the great costume design, the excellent set design and beautiful cinematography. They use sepias and near black & white's really well, and some of the transitions fit the period really well. Think early 1900's silent films. There aren't a whole lot of "money shots" as I think the budget wasn't that big, which actually added to the movie's heart.
Anyway, this movie is a love story. My girlfriend really did like the movie, but thought there should have been another sub plot. I don't know if there should have been, but suffice it to say that the movie is entertaining in a subtle kind of way.
They use Eisenheim's illusions sparsely, mostly in the early stages, to advance the story. I think the filmmakers really thought "we don't need to make people go wow because they'll know it's fake, we'll have to be more clever" and clever they were. In some scenes, again, knowing the power of CGI, you wonder if it's supposed to look that real or not, because at certain points of the movie, there are indications that Eisenheim isn't really a wizard, he's just a clever magician. Hint: use your ears as well to figure things out. But then in other scenes, you think, he MUST have super powers, otherwise how could he do that? Well, I refer to Criss Angel again, because someone tell me how he does some of that stuff.
The main stories are the love triangle between Eisenheim, Sophie and Leopold, and Inspector Uhl's struggle with being an honest cop and trying to please Prince Leopold. Now, Sophie is set to be married to Leopold, but has a little crush on Eisenheim. Leopold is the typical "poor little rich kid gone bad" and gets annoyed. As the relationship between grows between Eisenheim & Sophie, we see plans being hatched on all sides; how can Sophie & Eisenheim live together in peace & harmony and how can Leopold get Eisenheim locked up forever so Leopold can just marry Sophie, overthrow his daddy and rule Europe.
It's pretty simple. However, with a title like the illusionist, you know that there has to be a catch or a twist or something to make it more than "just a movie".
SPOILER ALERT
Because frankly, you see the "big reveal" coming as soon as the movie gets it's major turning point. You just KNOW what is going to happen before it happens. Of course, in the love triangle, something "bad" has to happen, and then the fingers start getting pointed. We see that Leopold denies having anything to do with the murder and Uhl reluctantly try to pin something, ANYTHING on Eisenheim, so that Leopold can gain the trust of the people again.
Well, of course you read that my girlfriend liked this movie, mostly because of its Hollywood ending, but there's also the "The Usual Suspects" ending that happens before the ending, explaining everything as though you didn't already know how everything happened. Now, I don't always see the twist coming, but this one was like an elephant.
END SPOILER
All in all, if you take your woman to see this, she'll really like it. I think it's a rental for sure. It's not a bad movie, but you certainly feel as though you want more from it. Or maybe it was that you wished you saw more tricks, but then you know you'd be disappointed knowing all the magic is fake anyway, because it's a movie. But then again, isn't all magic fake anyway? Well, the "movie magic" isn't completely lost here, the entertainment value is good, so it's worth a thumb up (get better Ebert) and 3 out of 5.
Thanks for reading, Go Flames Go,
Middleborn
