The Great Buck Howard (Sunday, July 26th, 2009) (100)

This is a small, silly movie about a kid who drops out of law school because he's a bit lost in life, and ultimately ends up as the personal assistant to an eccentric 'mentalist' hypnotist. The cast is much more impressive than the film itself - with John Malkovich as the eponymous Buck Howard, Colin Hanks as the kid, Emily Blunt as the love interest, Ricky Jay as the talent manager (as if you could have a movie loosely about magic without Jay); Colin's dad Tom as the kid's dad; Brooklyn hipster rockers Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play in one scene and the credits.

Overall the picture is rather lifeless and thin. Malkatraz is super earnest as only he can be; Colin is rather anemic; Blunt looks great in a small dress, but her attraction to Colin is a bit mysterious. Not a heck of a lot happens and then a few small things happen and then the movie is over.

Writer/director Sean McGinly clearly has a lot of connections in Hollywood to assemble such a cast, but it's unclear to my why they would all agree to do this movie, where I forgot what happened at the beginning before the end came 85 minutes later. This isn't a loathsome movie, just not a very good one.

Stars: 1 of 4