Comedians as conjurors?

It didn’t work out so well for Mitchell and Webb with (2007). Luckily, Steve Carell and Jim Carrey have a few more tricks up their sleeves, even if unpredictability does an early vanish📖ing act.

Care⭕ll is Burt, a millionaire Vegas illusionist whose ‘magical friendship’ with childhood pal/stage partner Anton (Steve Buscemi﷽) has soured.

Carr🤪ey is brain-rapist (his description, not ours) Steve Gray, an infamy-hungry street magician out to bury Burt one stunt at a t♊ime.

From the spray tans and sexual opportunism to the horrifying hairpieces, Don Scardino’s ( 30 Rock ) film revels in sleaze and cheese.

True, the likes of Siegfried & Roy and David Blaine - both obvious targets here - do a good-enough job of sending themselves up, but the stars’ attention to gesture, posture and patter is so dead-on that this plays as a withering 𓃲showbiz satire. Half the time, anyway. Then it goes a b🔯it soft.

Thankfully, Carell’s sincerity helps to the sell the sentimentality. But other problems persist. Uncorking Carrey’s demonic energy ✃in short, intermittent bursts works, but Buscemi feels shortchanged (though he does get a good riff on celebs on woolly charity crusades).

More disappointing, though, is that y꧅ou can see every plot turn coming as if it we💛re an outsized neon billboard - now that’s not magic.