The Illusionist
You might be thinking what I was thinking: Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti, Rufus Sewell, how bad could it be? Well, if you’re thinking that, stop thinking it right now because it can be very bad. The movie is based on a short story by a professor I had in school, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and without reading the short story, I know it was better than the movie.
Hey, it wasn’t THAT bad. For me, the worst thing was having Rufus Sewell on the screen for a substantial portion of the film and knowing the astonishing degree of gorgeosity of which he is capable but seeing him stymied in any effort he might have made to display said gorgeosity by his villanous role. I mean, really: does the villain have to be shorn of his Byronic curls? Wouldn’t it emphasize his villainousness if he looked terribly attractive? Even Shakespeare commented that one can smile and smile and be a villain. Thank goodness I saw Rufus on stage, from the 3rd row, in November, and am therefore certain that he is not losing one iota (or, as I say on a redundant day, one tiny iota) of his appeal. Otherwise, this movie would have planted a seed of real doubt in my mind, and that would have been most unsettling. My other criticism of the movie has to do with Jessica Biel’s teeth, which I thought were featured over-much. Now that I think of it, I’m sure you are actually correct in your comparative assessment of film and the short story: certainly neither of the above-mentioned deficiencies of the movie could have featured in the story, which I believe was published without illustrations.