Sundance. The Great Buck Howard.

"One might not expect a sweet, funny and warm-hearted crowd-pleaser from the man who wrote movies like Sexual Roulette, Sonic Impact and Venomous, but I guess filmmaker Sean McGinly has spent the last eleven years churning out schlock flicks just so he could get to something good," writes Scott Weinberg. "And I'm very pleased to report that his newest offering, a smoothly, strongly appealing comedy called The Great Buck Howard, is definitely the 'big break' that McGinly's been working for. Backed by a fantastic performance by John Malkovich - and some really fine work from young actors Colin Hanks and Emily Blunt - The Great Buck Howard might be the most affectionate look back at old-school entertainment since Peter O'Toole boozed his way through My Favorite Year."

Updated through 1/24.

Also at Cinematical, James Rocchi talks with Hanks and Blunt.

"In the last few years, there have been a few movies set within the world of magic and illusion," notes Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay. "The best of these, like Neil Burger's The Illusionist, makes the craft of the film's magician character integral to the story. The Great Buck Howard deals with magic's sister art of mentalism, which, due to the work of performers like Derren Brown, is experiencing something of a revival these days.... But The Great Buck Howard doesn't have any insights into the art, and, considering that mentalism deals with issues of psychology, personality and influence, the film's inability to use this subject matter to create more dramatic situations for its characters is pretty disappointing."

"A smoothly turned-out entertainment centered around an Amazing Kreskin-style mentalist comes down with an unfortunate case of the warm-and-fuzzies," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "[W]riter-director Sean McGinly's decision to frame the story as a relationship movie, as Buck's impressionable young assistant deals with some very familiar life issues, tilts the comic seesaw toward sentiment over satire."

Update, 1/24: "Despite Malkovich, The Great Buck Howard still manages to deflate itself to mediocre sketch comedy at nearly every turn," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "McGinly's efforts to spoof both trendoid celebrity culture and the bush-league entertainment circuit are broad and obvious, and Buck, by far the most interesting character, is never really the center of the story."

Posted by dwhudson at January 22, 2008 8:45 AM