The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

COMEDY

Sleight of Hand

6.5 out of 10 | Rental

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Rated: PG-13 Sexual content, dangerous stunts, a drug-related incident and language.
Release Date: March 15, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes

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Director: Don Scardino
Writers: Jonathan M. Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen, Tyler Mitchell
Cast: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, Jim Carrey, James Gandolfini, Alan Arkin, Jay Mohr

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SYNOPSIS: Magician Burt Wonderstone splits from his longtime stage partner after a guerrilla street magician steals their thunder. By spending some time with his boyhood idol, Burt looks to remember what made him love magic in the first place.

REVIEW: Small screen director Don Scardino, known for Royal Pains and 30 Rock, takes the stage for the silver screen to bring Steve Carell (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) into the spotlight with another possible comedy hit. Written by the team of Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Horrible Bosses), with Tyler Mitchell (My Own Worst Enemy) and Chad Kultgen (Southern Comfort) supplying the story, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone hopes to be true to its namesake.  

Young Albert is the focus of many bullies during his young life. On a lonely 10th birthday Albert receives the Rance Holloway Magic Kit which changes his young life forever. Dedicating his life to magic, he befriends another young boy who is the target and scorn of other kids in the school. Together, they master the tricks and start coming up with their own inventions of illusion. Fast forward 10 years and the duo, now called the Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell, Date Night) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi, Hotel Transylvania), are happy to have become one of the major acts in Las Vegas. For years they ruled the Strip with their 'Magical Friendship' show. But when ticket sales slump and the magic tricks become dated, Bert and Anton have to face the fact that their act is no longer relevant. Enter Steve Gray (Jim Carrey, Mr. Popper's Penguins), a Chris Angel-esque street magician, who takes the art of illusion for the next extreme level. Unable to compete with what's the target demographic of 18 to 45 want to see, Burt and Anton suffer a fracture in their own friendship causing Anton to disappear from the business while Burt struggles with obscurity. When Burt, now forced to perform magic at a convalescent home, discovers that his magical idol Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin, Stand Up Guys) is a resident there he starts to realize that what inspired him to become a magician in the first place is really the most important thing.

Steve Carell, finding himself a more quirky character than that of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World or Little Miss Sunshine, faces the challenge of a more sleight of hand role. As a head-lining magician and a Las Vegas casino staple, Carell's Wonderstone is not really a likable character at the start. The fact of Wonderstone being down and out still doesn't do much to sway the audience to his side. It's only when Wonderstone rediscovers what he has been missing, in his act, his friendships, and his personal life, does he become sympathetic and an underdog to root for. Anton, Wonderstone's partner in magic and longtime friends, knows exactly where Wonderstone heart lies. Olivia Wilde (The Words), as the stage manager Jane/magician's assistant Nicole, finds that her love of her own idol Burt Wonderstone is really just an illusion after all. Jim Carrey, as the street magician Steve Gray, adds some hijinks and a little conflict - but really is more silly than anything else. Alan Arkin's Holloway does a good job with this snarky retired magician who discovered that his loss of the love of his craft was secondary to losing himself to a loveless mundane show.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone tries to be silly, succeeding on some levels. It's relative clean fun, from the stage show opening dance moves to the song 'Abracadabra', to Jim Carrey's Gray looking to outdo himself at every turn to comic effect, to a magicians' duel involving a Yorky puppy, to the reveal of the final trick at the end of the film. There are a few laughs in the flick, but not enough to make it up uproarious comedy.

Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi work well together, showing us the illusion of some good chemistry on screen. Olivia Wilde's Jane enters a partnership of these two illusionists with reverence, skepticism, and eventual disappointment, always trying to see Wonderstone as someone who could still be the best if he wanted to. But her chemistry with Carell's Wonderstone seems a little forced, not as important to the flow of the story. The conflict between  Doug Munny (James Gandolfini, Killing Them Softly) and extreme illusionist Gray give the story something to do, but neither carry the story strong enough to get the job done. You have to love Arkin, though, in his snarky senior citizen's ways.

With a cameo from David Copperfield as a real magician, it is interesting to see that the art of illusion goes beyond just parlor tricks, sleight-of-hand, and grand illusion. Evident are bold velvet suits, capes, and as many rhinestones as one could costume can muster. Watching Carell dance poorly on stage before leading up to an actual allusions just goes to show you how much showmanship is needed to keep an audience enthralled between every trick's prestige. Just as the audiences become more jaded about the magic they want to see, Burt and Anton's stage antics lose their comic luster just as quickly. From Rance Holloway's caped master magician, to Burt Wonderstone's feathered hair and sequined velvet, to Steve Gray's grunge street illusionist, we get a timelines of the evolution of theatrical magic.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a story of magical friendships, the ever-changing art of illusion, and the cost of losing passion for one's profession. Although there's a few laughs and silly sequences throughout the movie, the story lags. Not unlike the stage direction between tricks, Burt Wonderstone leaves us waiting for the comic payoffs.

I am a fan of Steven Carell's work on both the small screen and the big screen, but Burt Wonderstone is, unfortunately, not that incredible. If you want to know the secret behind the tricks of the 'Disappearing Audience', you may want to wait for the rental.

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The Words

Fiction or Life

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Rated: PG-13 Smoking and brief strong language
Release Date: September 7, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 36 minutes

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Director: Brian Klugman, Lee Sternthal
Writers: Brian Klugman, Lee Sternthal
Cast:  Dennis Guaid, Jeremy Irons, Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, J.K. Simmons, Olivia Wilde

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SYNOPSIS:  When a struggling writer Rory cannot catch a break, a found manuscript propels him to a successful book and awards. When an old man confronts Rory to tell the writer that the words Rory wrote were his, Rory struggles with what to do next.

REVIEW: Writer Brian Klugman Lee Sternthal, writers of Tron: Legacy, step up their game by writing and directing the words they scribed. The writing, and now directing, duo trade the inside of a computer built on written code to the inside of several paralleling stories revolving around the written word.

A struggling writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper, Limitless) spent three years writing a book. Shopping it around to the literary agents, Rory is eventually contacted and told that although the book is a beautiful work of creative art, there would be no way for the agent to shop this type of work to any publisher from an unknown writer. Rory, already going to his father (J.K. Simmons, Contraband) for financial help, realizes he must make a choice between his fiction and his life. He takes a job at a literary agent office, now able to make ends meet and able to support and marry Dora (Zoe Saldana, Takers). On their honeymoon to Paris, Dora and Rory happen upon an old worn satchel in a second-hand shop that Dora promptly buys for the man she sees so much potential in. Back at home, Rory now has problems writing anything new. One day, he discovers a complete manuscript in the satchel and reads its. Realizing that he will never be the writer of stories that he had just read, Rory is haunted by what he just experienced and rewrites the entire manuscript word for word just to feel the words flow from the old parchment through his fingers onto his laptop. Dora finds the new work on the computer and pushes Rory to shop the work to his boss. When the agent loves the book, it is published and becomes a great success. Torn up inside by his plagiarism, Rory is uncomfortable with his success. Things get worse when an old man (Jeremy Irons, Margin Call) confronts Rory in Central Park about stealing his work and tells Rory of a Young Man (Ben Barnes, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) after the Second World War and his enlightening experiences in Paris with a local girl named Celia (Nora Arnezeder, Safe House) that became the genesis of the work that Rory copied. The question is... what are the old man's real motivations, and what can Rory do about it?

The Words is a layered piece of fiction with stories within stories, fiction intertwined with reality. At the onset, we catch a glimpse of a man preparing to read excerpts from his book 'The Words'. What we do not expect is the fact that the author of 'The Words' is Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid, What to Expect When You're Expecting), not Rory. Immediately we find that Rory and Dora are characters in Clay's newest book. As the story unfolds, Clay recites the words that brings Rory and Dora to life. But as we get deeper into these characters' lives, we find more layers as a found manuscript typed decades earlier unveils an even more heartbreaking story written by a man who was struggling in his own life. Artistic inspiration comes from heartache, struggle, loss, joy, and pain. In The Words, catharsis comes from pouring one's soul from the heart and mind through the fingertips into fiction that imitates life.

The Words is well crafted, each perspective of the story differing from the others. The writer of 'The Words', Clay Hammond, lives in a world of accolades. A young woman, Daniella (Olivia Wilde, The Change-up), corners him and asks him about the book. When they retire to his modern high-rise apartment, she realizes that the glorious city skyline is tempered by stark modernism and sparse furnishings. In the New York City where Rory and Dora live, they are surrounded by a more earthy bohemian environment, struggling to make ends meet but loving each other. The discovery of the old manuscript brings uncomfortable success and the old man who actually wrote, then lost the story decades earlier. As the old man recites his own tale that led to the writing of his manuscript, the world of his younger version and Celia in post-war Paris, the world becomes softer and grainier, the streets fit for a world recovering from a violent era in history.

The story captivates most of the way through, offering intriguing dialogue and scenes. The weaving of the three tales allows the slower pace to be more interesting and varied. The music is driving and harmonious to each scene, helping to tie the worlds together and providing another unspoken character to the film. The pace is slow and deliberate, but not distracting. Only when you return to the outer shell of the story with Clay and Daniella does the film truly slow down to the point where you wonder whether Clay's writing and reading of 'The Words' is truly necessary.

Each character is portrayed with capable hands by each of the actors and actresses. Some of the best scenes are those between Bradley Cooper's Rory and Jeremy Irons' Old Man. Their dialogue on the bench in front of the pond is riveting. And the period work of Ben Barnes as the Young Man and Nora Arnezeder as Celia could be a beautiful film unto itself. 

The Words could have been a superior award-winning film, up to the same standard as The Reader. Maybe the slower pace, the twisty ending, or just the novice status of the directors keep it from truly transcending into classic status. A fine film in many regards, there is still an intangible that seems to keep The Words a little too reserved.

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WORTH:  DVD or Rental

In Time

Don't Give It A Second Thought

Director: Andrew Niccol

Writers: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Johnny Galecki, Matt Bomer

SYNOPSIS: In the future, men and women stop aging at 25, but are granted only one more year of life. If one has the money or the means, they can extend their one-year clock indefinitely, closing in on immortality.

REVIEW: Andrew Niccol, writer and director of Lord of War, S1m0me and Gattaca, returns to double duty as writer and director of his new high-concept sci-fi thriller In Time. Following in the footsteps of his sci-fi efforts for Gattaca, where society favored the genetically superior, Niccol now broaches a new twist on the same futuristic utopian concept - genetically altered humanity and society's effects on it longevity.

In the film In Time, people have been genetically engineered to age until 25, then have a remaining year of time that displays as a digital readout on the forearm. Set in a future where the currency is measured in time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months or years, people work to have time added to their lifeline, and pay for rent, food, and goods in the same manner. Once the lifeline counts down to zeros, the person will drop dead. In this future, which looks suspiciously like our recent past, people live in 'time zones', effectively separating the idle rich with their mansions and extravagance from the working poor with their time lending banks and ghettos.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake - Alpha Dog) is a 25 plus 3 year old who works all day just to have enough time on his lifeline to wring out a living day to day for rent and to add time to his mother Rachael's (Olivia Wilde - Cowboys & Aliens) lifeline. Long time friend Borel (Johnny Galecki - The Big Bang Theory) works with Will at the factory, trying to churning out assembly line time cartridge sleeves fast enough to meet their weekly quota. One day, a man named Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer - White Collar) appears in the bar with over a century of time on his arm, bringing the notice of local ghetto thugs led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer - I Am Number Four) who look to steal his time away. Will intervenes and Henry gifts his century of time to Will before timing himself out in a suicide. With all of the extra time, Will agonizes when he still cannot reach his mother in time to keep her from timing out herself. With the notable death of a rich citizen, Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy - Inception) is called to investigate his death. Now accused of murder, Will runs. Using years of time, he crosses several 'time zones' to escape the ghetto and enter the world of the rich. Eventually, Leon catches up with Will, setting off a chain of events that involves car chases, hostage taking, time bank stealing, and social and political intrigue.

Timberlake puts his best foot forward, but falls short of his performance as Frankie in Alpha Dog. Seyfried as Sylvia looks gorgeous and almost unrecognizable as the young heiress to the Weis banking and stock empire, walking the fine line between disdain, boredom, and regret. Murphy, his chiseled face and sharp blue eyes convey more than any of his dialogue. Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) as the elder Weis controlling more than just a stock portfolio brings his Mad Men sensibility to the role with a wisp of wisdom thrown in. Pettyfer's ghetto thug and enforcer Fortis adds a new dimension of drama as Salas runs from the Timekeepers, Weis, and the endless countdown of seconds.

Reminiscent of William F. Nolan's novel Logan's Run, subsequent Michael York 1976 film and television series of the same name, people live in a dystopic ageist future society where their lives are forcibly cut short at 30 years of age. When a person's palm flower crystal turns black on their 'Lastday', they are required to submit themselves to extermination. If they try to run, a Sandman is tasked with their return to the Sleepshop or with their immediate execution. 35 years after the original film and 44 years after the book's release, Niccol tries his hand at a slick new approach similar to Logan's Run's dystopic ageist future society theme.

In Time makes Logan's Sandmen obsolete by making people drop dead when their timeline zero out. But the fact that time can be gifted, inherited, or stolen between people provides new dynamics to explore. Instead of an forced utopian society based on a limit of age, In Time is based on time. While the poor can barely scrap together enough hours to survive another day, the rich barter and save their years and decades. And when the ghetto class may verge on moving up in the world, the cost of goods and interest rates controlled by the rich rise to knock the poor back down.

A wonderful high concept sci-fi film in theory, a satisfying first act ends and is replaced by strange humming vehicles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, overly sparse landscapes, and lots of running. Many elements are cool and well-thought out, but the overall story and tension falls flat. The worry of running out of time like sand running through an hourglass seem to come to a standstill when you can swap seconds and minutes as easily as gum.

WORTH: Netflix

The Change-Up

The Old Switch-a-Roo

Director: David Dobkin
Writers: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cast: Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Olivia Wilde, Leslie Mann, Alan Arkin


SYNOPSIS: A over-worked, career-driven lawyer and married father Dave switches bodies with his wild-living actor-wannabe bachelor best friend Mitch, leading to chaos and disasters in both of their original lives.

REVIEW: David Dobkins, director of Shanghai Knights, Wedding Crashers and Fred Claus, takes a tale of body switching from The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It's the same old classic story of two people (son and father, mother and daughter, friends) - who lead different lives, change bodies, explore the possibilities of the other person's life to ill effect, make personal self-discoveries about their lives, and yearn to be switched back to their old lives before the change is permanent.

A comedy body-switching sub-genre that includes Freak Friday in all of its iterations, Like Father, Like Son, 17 Again and Big, The Change-Up looks to ramp up the raunchiness with their rated-R version of this formulaic comedy main-stay. Stoic, straight man Jason Bateman teams up with the green ring-slinger Ryan Reynolds as polar opposite best friends Dave Lockwood and Mitch Planko. Dave Lookwood is the father of three whose self-imposed drive to further his career demands so much of his attention that he has little time for his wife Jamie (played with grace, humor and heart by Leslie Mann). On the other side of the body-switching coin is Mitch Planko who struggles through life aided by a schedule full of sex, herbs and paper, a GED and a laundry list of poor decision making. After a night of bar drinking, Dave and Mitch pee in a fountain and wish for each other's life, causing a rolling blackout and a seemingly permanent change in their minds and body. Dave, in Mitch's body, must abandon his mindset of always working and never relaxing, while Mitch, in Dave's body, must figure out how to handle the rigid schedules of ballet practices, 3am feedings of twins, and navigate his way through a merger agreement and documents that the real Dave had been preparing for months.

Leslie Mann comes on board as Dave's wife Jamie, a woman who is happy with the lifestyle Dave has provided for her and the kids and just wants Dave to slow down and give her a little attention. Olivia Wilde from Cowboys & Aliens joins the cast as legal eagle Sabrina who catches the eyes of both Dave and Mitch, regardless of what body they inhabit. Alan Arkin cameos as Mitch's father, hoping for a son who wants to turn his live around and finish at least one thing that he starts.

The R-rating offers a couple gross out laughs, a few of topless ladies, and more explicit language. There are some hits, but a lot of missed opportunities. One of the twins, before the 3am changings and feedings, continues to bang his head against the rail of his crib. Its mildly funny the first time, but quickly loses its ability to instill a laugh each time we see it again. The father/son relationship with Mitch and his father could have been developed more to give us some more tenderness. Most of the heart of the film comes from Leslie Mann's Jamie as she continues to stand by her man with the realization that she may become numb to the problems of the marriage. Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman play their duel roles well enough, but I know both have such wider ranges than what appears on screen.

Ultimately, The Change-Up will make you laugh a little, cry a little, and smile a little. In the end, though, The Change-Up could have very easily switches places with some of the other lesser worthy films in the genre. I love every actor and actress cast in the lead roles, but I think that maybe some of them wished they had woken up in the bodies of another film as well.

WORTH: Rental

Cowboys & Aliens

A FIstful of Aliens

Director: Jon Favreau
Writers: Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Steve Oedekerk, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (Platinum Studios comic book)
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Keith Carradine, Sam Rockwell, Harrison Ford

SYNOPSIS: A man, Jake, wakes in 1873 Arizona with no memory and a futuristic gadget on his wrist as the only clue to who he is. When alien craft attack the town, Jake, the townfolk, ranchers and indians must band together to deal with this extraterrestial threat.

REVIEW: Jon Favreau, touted director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 (don't forget Swingers and Made, people!), takes a screenplay from a stable of A-list screenwriters to bring Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's Platinum Studios graphic novel (just a fancy name for comic books, folks!) about Old West Arizona Territory cowboys confronted and attacked by aliens from outer space. The A-list team writing team includes Star Trek reboot scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, Iron Man scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Lost creator/writer Damon Lindelof, and Bruce Almighty writer Steve Oedekerk. Throw in producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and executive producer Steven Spielberg, and you have a talent pool that is hard to beat.

The Cowboys & Aliens concept on film is brand new, but makes you wonder how in the world we haven't seen this on the big screen before now. There must be a treatment or screenplay rejected from a major studio head somewhere. Only in the graphic novel format would you believe that the mash-up of Old West cowboys and extraterrestrials would work! Even the title of Cowboys & Aliens in the initial trailers brought eye rolls and giggles from movie-goers.

Daniel Craig stars as Jake Lonergan, a man who wakes up in the 1873 Old West Arizona Territories with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Attached to his wrist is a strange looking metal bracket that cannot be taken off. Happened upon by a trio of hunters, he quickly realizes that in spite of an absent memory, he still can brawl with the best of them, taking down the group of armed men in quick order. Taking clothes, a pistol, a horse, and their dog, Jake rides to a small town named Absolution and quickly gets into unwanted trouble with the wealthy rancher's son Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano) and with the sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine). The wealthy rancher Col. Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) looks for retribution for both his son and against Jake. Before any of that can occur strange lights in the sky fly in through the night sky, materializing as strange mechanical "demonic" flying machines, blowing up buildings and lassoing townsfolk straight off the dirt streets, into the air and off into the night.

Set as a western, Cowboys & Aliens provides the typical cast of characters, including a preacher Meacham (Clancy Brown), the sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine), a doctor turned entrepreneur barkeep (Sam Rockwell), a young boy Emmett (Noah RInger) looking to become a man, and a strange beautiful woman Ella (Olivia Wilde) who seems to know about Jake, his bracelet and the alien invaders. The desert vista landscapes are picture perfect, proving that you do not need CGI or matte backgrounds to shot a scene in epic proportions. Absolution is both gritty and typical for a small formerly booming desert western town.

Also set as a pioneering merge of western and science fiction, Cowboys & Aliens gives us at first shadowing, fleeting shots of the mechanical flying crafts that make their first appearance like the lights straight out from the first appearances in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even after Jake and his wrist weapon shoots down one of the invading craft the townsfolk are still unsure of what they are dealing with. One of the monster aliens streaks through the town so quickly, Jake, Col. Dolarhyde, and the rest of Absolution are left with only green fluid and tracks to follow - at their own peril. The aliens physiques are somewhat unique and new, a cross between a frog, a crab and the Hulk. Quick and with sharp teeth and durable bullet-bouncing hides, they prove to be a superior menace, both on the ground and in the air. The attack craft are also unique, very cool and fun to watch. But anyone in the known universe knows, humans are as resourceful as raccoons and resilient as cockroaches when threatened by aliens from outer space.

Cowboys & Aliens is a film idea we have not seen before. Jon Favreau makes it fun to watch, both on the western side, the science fiction side, and the convergence of the two. How can horses and six-shooters hope to defeat an alien horde, even with their Old West attitude? As a Western, Cowboys & Aliens will not reach the caliber of Unforgiven or 3:10 to Yuma, although Jake Lonergan is as badass a outlaw as you would ever want to meet. As an alien invasion flick, we have seen some of the stuff before - the lights, the fleeting forms in the dark abducting innocents - but Cowboys & Aliens puts it together in a fresh way. The film may be too high concept for the general filmgoer, but the experience was a picturesque funny action-packed way to spend two hours with a favorite bucket of freshly popped kernels.

WORTH: Matinee and BluRay

Tron: Legacy (3D)

Digital Revenge

[Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen]

image from geeky-gadgets.com

RANT: I reviewed the comments that I have received for previous reviews. One of the comments stated that I explained 127 Hours, but failed to really review it until the last paragraph. So, to the writer who remains anonymous, I will try to do better!

SYNOPSIS: After his father has been missing for several years, Sam Flynn is accidentally digitized into the Grid - a computer world his father recreated. Once there, both elder and younger Flynn must fight against Clu who has been programmed to create an Utopia.

Twenty-eight years ago, Disney released Tron, a movie that received lukewarm reception and box office. Although visually immersed and nominated for two Academy Awards (Sound, Costume), no one would have imagined that a sequel would or should be put into play. But Disney, a studio that decided that a amusement park ride about pirates would make a good film, sometimes knows better than the rest of us.

When Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, disappears, his son Sam, played by Garrett Hedlund, is left as the major stakeholder of software giant Encom. When Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), a partner of Kevin Flynn, receives a page from Flynn's shutdown video arcade, Sam stumbles across his father's hidden office. Once at his father's desk, he is accidentally digitized and sent into the same computer world that his father disappeared into many years ago.

Parts Blade Runner, The Matrix, Hackers, Star Wars, Gladiator, and of course the original Tron,Tron: Legacy is a visually stunning science fiction adventure. The memory disks that the programs wear on their back are almost as cool as a light saber, and more functional than a Swiss army knife - especially during the gladiator battles. The light cycles, other vehicles on and off the Grid, and the Tron world are beautifully designed and executed. Clu, the command program Kevin Flynn creates to design and build an utopia society in his absence, is rendered perfectly in Jeff Bridges' own young image. My only complaint is that regardless of how far the CGI technology has come to create a young version of Bridges, as soon as the construct Clu opens his mouth to speak, you can see that the design studios still have a ways to go before perfection is achieved.

And perfection is what the program Clu is trying to achieve. Coded to create an utopia as Kevin Flynn saw it, Clu did as he was tasked. But in the pursuit of excellence, Utopian society looks something more akin to tyrannical oppression of anything other than conformity. What lengths will one go to in order to reach their goals?

The story is computer world cool, creating a world that is 600hz hi-def plasma perfect. All of the best elements of the original are brought well into the new millennium. If you liked the original, you will like this one as well. The plot is a little deeper, the spectacle a little bigger. The question will be whether the sequel will hold up to scrutiny better than the original.

Worth: Matinee or BluRay

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