Supremely disappointing mystery/melodrama

Rating: 3/10 (1 September 2008)

The formula: combine the kind of visual feast made possible by modern digital effects and expensive costumes and scenery with some of the better actors of this generation, people like Paul Giamatti and Edward Norton. Throw them into a murder mystery with magic tricks. The result: a less than mediocre film that challenges its audience's patience and intelligence at every turn.
Norton plays Eisenheim, a turn of the century magician in Europe who finds his long lost love, Sophie (Jessica Biel) just as she's about to become married to Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). They set in motion a complex plot to free her from his clutches, all the time watched by the Prince's loyal police Inspector Uhl (Giamatti).
This movie started to alienate me right from the very beginning with the unconvincing and overly showy special effects for the magic tricks. I think it's important to at least make the audience believe that we're watching actual magic tricks that could have been done at the time this movie was set. Instead what we see looks more like a digital version of "Slimer" from the Ghostbusters. The quality of Eisenheim's magic tricks are approximately matched by the quality of Uhl's "detecting". The quality of the mystery itself is so thin that any person with even the most basic skills in detective films could figure it out, but Uhl only figures it out at the very end in a sudden rush of elation. It's one of the movie's weakest points, where everything is revealed in this rush of a montage that basically tells us: "hey, if you're as smart as Uhl, then you must have been fooled by this movie." Instead of misdirection, the film simply leaves out elements that would have made the mystery even more obvious.
I have very little more to say about it. Never at any point in watching the movie was I more than moderately entertained. I did enjoy Giamatti's performance. I thought Biel's performance was about on the level of the average made for cable movie. Norton's performance was a misfire, far too understated. And poor Rufus Sewell, who is a good actor, was directed in such a way that you'd think he was playing to the back rows. The director of this movie has a pitiful understanding of how to work with the actors he was presented with. It's his good fortune that Giamatti was able to salvage something from it. The production design is pleasant, but sort of monotonous. There should be more of a contrast between the look of the slums and of the palaces, but everything in this film was photographed in a really bland way.
"The Illusionist" is the most offensive kind of "serious" film -- a magic trick that truly is just a trick, with no movie magic.