Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) are a successful pair of old-school magicians who have been performing magic tricks together since they first teamed up as kids to entertain their classmates and have subsequently ruled the Las Vegas Strip, raking in a fortune with illusions as big as Burt’s growing ego. Their greatest deception, however, is their public friendship as the two have secretly grown to loathe one another. The straw that critically injures the figurative camel comes when Anton is, literally, critically injured by Burt during one of their performances, resulting in the two parting ways.

It’s only when Burt is overshadowed by a popular street-magician named Steve Gray (Jim Carrey), whose cult-following surges with each outrageous stunt (e.g., not blinking and/or urinating for days on end), that he must convince Anton to return to the act, so he can salvage his title – as well as their friendship – and get back in touch with what made him love magic in the first place.

Shaun Munro of Whatculture.com writes, “Even if all the beats unfold exactly as you expect, it’s the film’s quirkily unrestrained sense of humor that sees it through, from the cartoonish exaggeration of the characters to the ludicrously overblown nature of the tricks themselves. It’s clear that everyone working on the project is having a lot of fun, and this transpires through to the audience. It’s got a clever undercurrent running through most of the humor, though its foremost concern is to beguile with its off-kilter nature.”

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is opening tonight, Thursday the 14th, with special 10pm screenings. HSX is predicting that the film will earn around $18M in its debut weekend at 3,100+ theaters. For a hilarious gallery of TV spots and stills from the movie, check out the official homepage linked above where you can also “Wonder-fy yourself” by inserting a picture of your face onto any of the Burt Wonderstone posters.

Rating: PG-13 // Genre: Comedy // Runtime: 1 hr. 40 min. // Starring: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, Jim Carrey // Directed by: Don Scardino // Written by: Chad Kultgen, Tyler Mitchell, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley // Produced by: New Line Cinema, Benderspink, Carousel Productions // Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures