The Great Buck Howard: Critic Reviews

The Great Buck Howard is in love with kitsch, the backwaters of showbiz, and true magic. It's 
a wee charmer that left me enchanted.

The Great Buck Howard is an agreeable show business satire with a warm heart.

It sidesteps ultra-saccharine territory, emerging as sweetly nostalgic and gently satiric, if lightweight, entertainment.

Under the direction of, say, Alexander Payne or David O. Russell, Malkovich might have flourished in a deeper, darker, more madcap version of the film.

It's the movie equivalent of handing us a business card.

When an actor finds the perfect role, a rare sort of magic happens. And you can find it onscreen right now, in The Great Buck Howard.

A modest snapshot of a performer.

Just as in Burn After Reading, the craftsman's pursuit of character, warts and vulnerability intact, is adamant. He makes it hard to pass up this Buck.

The cast is speckled with lively souls like Steve Zahn and Griffin Dunne, but the only person who wakes the movie from its slumbers is Emily Blunt.

The film is funny and perceptive in the way it shows the humiliations for a man with Buck's tender vanity.

Writer-director Sean McGinley based his title character on the Amazing Kreskin, and it provides a suitable mainstream vehicle for Malkovich's bruised aloofness.

Malkovich, mixing the magician shtick with a dogged resiliency, a dab of pathos, and more than a bit of mystery (did he really just hypnotize 300 people?), is simply a joy to watch.

Buck Howard is Malkovich's show. When's he's off the screen, the film sputters, but while he's on-camera, it's magical.

Malkovich keeps Buck an enigma -- part fool, part unheralded genius -- and if the film moves in expected ways it also hits some subtle grace notes.

Pic succeeds to an impressive degree.

The film is a small-scale charmer that provides a tailor-made role for Malkovich, who is always fun to watch.

A pleasant enough comedy in the My Favorite Year mold.

This is not a rare movie, but it does have a warm red center. It's likable, and its appeal grows as it recovers from a shaky start and finds its footing.

Malkovich's titular mentalist is the primary focus of attention%u2014and sadly the source of many of the film's unique problems. In a career of strange performances, Malkovich turns in a true curiosity here%u2014and maybe it's because he is not, for once,

Despite the presence of some A-list performers, The Great Buck Howard can't shake the feeling that it's more on the level of made-for-TV than something destined for theatrical greatness.

What Malkovich really needs are actors opposite him with a few more tricks up their sleeve.

The problem isn't so much in the film's clumsy, hand-holding narration, or in its forced quirkiness. Rather it's that its most interesting character -- the one they named the thing after -- isn't the main character.

A slight yet satisfying show-biz tale.