Great packaging... but nothing good inside

Rating: 3/10 (7 January 2011)

I am getting a bit annoyed with the IMDb ratings because they regularly trick me into watching bad movies which have inexplicably high scores.
This movie is actually well packaged, technically competent, with good acting (except for the always wooden Jackman) and quite decent from a story-telling point of view. I was able to connect with the story and the characters despite their flaws and I was entertained for the first hour and a half.
The process of getting behind the scenes and trying to understand/figure out all the subterfuges and tricks that these rival magicians use both in their acts and against each other was quite captivating and carried the movie well, the ultimate goal being to try to figure out "the transported man".
Several of the twists caught me by surprise and I was waiting for a spectacular finale but then Nolan manages to drop the plot on the dung pile by unveiling... the Cloning Machine!
The whole story becomes meaningless science fiction drivel. Why bring in a cloning machine when he could have borrowed a Transporter from the Star Trek set filming next door and wouldn't have needed to kill all those clones? And think of how all the other magic acts in the movie could have been enhanced with a Gravity Inverter, a Matter Replicator, Invisibility Cloak...
Once the story credibility falls apart the nice packaging becomes an empty shell and it can't save the movie from demise. Too bad, it seemed to have great potential...
Is Nolan becoming the next M Night Shyamalan?