If this were a beer it'd be called Prestige Light.

Rating: 6/10 (25 January 2007)

THE ILLUSIONIST 2006 (EDWARD NORTON, JESSICA BIEL, PAUL GIAMIATTI) DIRECTED BY: NEIL BURGER ~ THE RUNDOWN: A well acted, nicely polished piece of entertainment, but made with little passion and little drama. ~ It's hard to say exactly what this movie's missing; the performances are fun to watch, especially that freaky Rufus Sewell guy, and, as always, Edward Norton is amazing as well as Giamatti; it is entertaining in an old-fashioned, mystery type of way; and it's beautifully shot, but I think that's part of the problem - it's too beautiful...too old-fashioned...too much like a movie that tries too hard to impress us with its image and not engage us enough with its story. To compare it with 2006's The Prestige, a film about the same subject, the Prestige simply crushes the Illusionist when it comes to "movie magic", relying very little on CGI and reaching our hearts through an amazing script about humanity...the strive for success, the need to be loved and at the same time showing us how magic really exists in our modern world. The Illusionist, on the other hand, is simply more superficial in nature and would work better as like a thirty-minute TV show. The big twist at the end would be very satisfying for avid TV watchers just after a commercial break, but, seriously, when your making a movie around it you shouldn't just have the viewer sit and wait with little to no hints just to fill up time and then hit them with it and expect a big hooray. ~ Overall, this actually is worth watching because it is indeed entertaining, well acted and interesting, but don't feel bad either if you decide to skip it.