A "Big Reveal" Film From A Director Who Doesn't Get It Right

Rating: 3/10 (7 March 2017)

When making a "big reveal" film, a top-notch director must realize that the "reveal" cannot be the entire picture. One must also include fair doses of character development, believable actions, & compelling drama in order to make us care enough for the reveal to actually mean something. Sadly, Neil Burger does very little of that within "The Illusionist".
For a basic plot summary, this period piece centers on stage magician Eisenheim (Edward Norton), who conjures up apparitions that are utterly stupefying. When Sophie (Jessica Biel), the former love of his life, comes back into the equation, Eisenheim must make the decision once and for all as to whether or not they can carve out a life together despite being from completely different social classes.
Despite the fact that "The Illusionist" was clearly made with care and a very good intent, it ultimately fails to impress for two specific reasons:
1. There really isn't much to get invested in. The characters are little more than cardboard cutouts (the human element is only "talked", not actually "lived"), while the events transpiring around them are never explained (e.g. Eisenheim's actual tricks).
2. There is no "grit" to the picture whatsoever. In Christopher Nolan's masterpiece "The Prestige", a similar magic-themed film, the director takes you deep inside the world the characters are living in, pulling no punches along the way. We see it all...the good and the bad and all the raw emotions that result from it. In "The Illusionist", however, stereotypical "class differences" and "the controlling husband" are used in place of real emotion. Those stereotypes may have been true of the era, but in this case they needed to be felt instead of just referenced.
Overall, then, I cannot recommend this one to those who like their movies deep and full of character growth, as it is quite superficial all the way around. Yes, it does have a "mind-blowing" reveal, but because it fails in so many areas before that point, it loses all its credibility, so to speak. I highly recommend "The Prestige" as an alternative yet still containing very similar themes.