A Harlequin Romance with Sleight of Hand

Rating: 1/10 (8 February 2007)

***MILD SEMI-SPOILER*** Encouraged by the positive feedback I'd heard from friends and colleagues, off I went to see "The Illusionist." My instinct had been to avoid this film, as the trailer made it seem like yet another hammy, creaky, low-budget costume drama with philosophic pretensions. After the film's opening credits began to roll, and the theater filled with a Philip Glass score so terrible I thought the fool from "Finding Neverland" must have written it, I realized that the film recommendations of friends and colleagues are generally as unreliable as, say, their recommendations for who should become your life partner.
In any case, I won't add to the general dissatisfactions already expressed about this film in other user comments except to say that rarely have I seen such monotonous acting in service of so terrible a script, apart from B-horror flicks- and then those elements are 90% of the fun of watching. Norton, Giamatti, Sewell and especially Biel wander around the screen in a zombie-like haze, perhaps seduced and bewildered by the faux European accents they're required to sport. I suppose the director intended there to be an air of gravitas to all the sombre pacing and actorly frowns, but as my guest at the cinema put it after watching Norton and Biel's "tender" love scene: "this is like a high-school play." Indeed.
That so many viewers were surprised by the ending doesn't, sadly, surprise me. It just proves that the majority of people do not watch films all that carefully. The actor playing Norton's mentor pops up twice in the space of 10 minutes- the second time in a pivotal role designed as a big clue, presumably, to the fact that something is rotten in the state of Vienna. As if we didn't already know.
What a stinker.