Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/6/09
If celebrity is a virus,
our society is thoroughly infected. We wanna be famous. Failing
that, to know somebody famous. Failing that, to feel like we do.
And if we have any of those things, we're hanging onto them for dear life.
Cable networks are filled with reality shows following fallen celebrities
around as they struggle to fan the dying embers of their past glory.
These days the primary path to fame for those who don't act, sing, write
or play a sport is infamy. But back in the day, it was the vaudeville
talents: ventriloquism, celebrity impersonation, magic. Or,
as the title character in The Great Buck Howard would call it, “mentalism”.
Writer/director Sean McGinly knows what of he speaks, as the former road
manager for The Amazing Kreskin, and he's crafted a really memorable character
study of the decline and resurgence of a man who's built his entire life
around having been famous. Despite fine performances across the board,
the rest of his tale doesn't quite hold water, but as embodied by the splendid
John Malkovich, The Great Buck Howard makes The Great Buck Howard
well worth seeing.
Troy Gable (Colin Hanks)
was pushed into law school by his father (real-life Dad Tom Hanks), but
he just can't stand it. So one day he up and quits, and decides to
reinvent himself as a writer. To pay the bills in the short term,
he responds to an ad from a “celebrity” looking for a new assistant.
Turns out, that Celebrity is The Great Buck Howard (John Malkovich), veteran
of over 60 appearance on The Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson:
Howard wages a one-sided feud with Jay Leno for never having him on).
Now, Buck travels the country with his act, a combination of “pick a number”
magic tricks, hypnotism, comedy, music and an amazing trick wherein his
fee for the night is hidden by audience members while he waits backstage
and then he emerges to, invariably, find it. The crowds aren't huge,
the cities aren't major, but Buck's still a Diva, and fires his previous
road manager (Adam Scott) before he can fully train Troy. But the
new kid takes to the job and all seems well until a fateful date in Cincinnati.
Buck's profile needs a boost, and he's got a major new trick to unveil.
To drum up publicity, he contracts his old publicist, but he's busy and
instead sends young Valerie Brennan (Emily Blunt). Valerie can't
stand the old mentalist, but does take a liking to Troy. Alas, no
matter how well the trick goes, a series of bad breaks including a hatchet
job article in Entertainment Weekly will put Buck Howard's career on life
support. But fame can come from the strangest events, and you never
know when a comeback might be right around the corner...
Buck Howard's certainly a
trip: his show is alternately amazing and corny, and the money-finding
trick sure is a showstopper. Malkovich walks a fine line with great
skill, making Buck insufferable and delightful in equal measure.
People keep asking if Buck's gay or not, but any kind of personal life
is probably beside the point: Buck lives to be (or maybe to have
been) The Great Buck Howard, and his utter cluelessness about everything
else going on in the world around him (“close friend” George Takei played
Sulu on “The Star Trek”) just re-enforces the fact that there's nothing
in Buck's world but Buck. But he takes real joy in performing his
show, and when he cries out “I love this town!” at every turn or inflicts
the world's most aggressive handshake on person after person, he seems
totally sincere. Watching his ups and downs is quite engaging, and
I'm sure McGinly's inside knowledge helped a lot to craft this larger-than-life
figure.
The other performances are
also strong. Colin Hanks has just the right amount of shiftlessness
for us to believe in Troy and just enough drive to make him likable.
Blunt's character is problematic (more on that later), but she plays her
with snap and wit. The elder Hanks is withering in his two scenes:
it's funny to see the one-time Kip Wilson do such a good job as an icy
father figure. Steve Zahn and Debra Monk have a couple of great scenes
as a creepy brother and sister who insinuate themselves into Buck's life
while he's in Cincinnati. Their desperation to bask in the glow of
his dubious fame is kinda scary. The movie probably contains too
many celebrity cameos, but a wide range of talk show hosts and fallen stars
effectively embody themselves.
What keeps The Great Buck
Howard from being entirely successful is that the story is told from
Troy's point of view, and I don't think it ever pins down exactly why other
than the fact that he represents McGinly in the real story. The movie
introduces him with a flourish, and he's a constantly likable presence
while the story perches him between Buck on one side and Valerie on the
other while he tries to figure out what to do with his life. Buck's
example suggests that everyone has something they could do and love so
well that it's worth hanging onto no matter what. Valerie counters
that nobody's “meant” to do anything, and Troy just needs to find some
job he can stand that he can succeed at and get on with his life.
The events of the third act fail to reconcile those positions, and it just
feels wrong for the angels on his shoulders to be so at odds and never
come to any sort of common ground or have their positions truly put to
the test. If The Great Buck Howard is a character study, only
Buck himself can be said to have been truly studied.
Despite having been lavishly
produced and filled with familiar faces and celebrity cameos, The Great
Buck Howard struggled to find a distributor and is now trickling out
in various markets thanks to Magnolia Pictures. It's a lot better
than that would suggest, and Malkovich's performance alone is worth the
price of admission. Now if only Sean McGinly had been able to make
better cinematic sense of what his time in the shadow of the Amazing Kreskin
really meant. Maybe only that, for a time, he knew a famous guy.
And these days, that's a lot. |
