This surprisingly respective and almost touching homage to perhaps the last great mentalist of popular culture, The Great Buck Howard is a funny and finely made film for the most part. Those parts that aren't so finely made, however, are a good introduction to some of the perils and pitfalls of filmmaking.
Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) is a young man who flees an unhappy existence in law school and winds up the road manager for the great Buck Howard (John Malkovich), a legendary mentalist. Well, Buck was a legend in the 1960s and 70s when he appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 61 times. A couple of decades later, he's been reduced to performing his effects in front of half empty theaters in small towns across the country and Troy becomes the man who makes sure Buck gets picked up at the airport, has brandy in his dressing room and bears the brunt of his displeasure when things don't go exactly the way Buck wants. Along the way, Troy gets to meet and bed a beautiful PR agent (Emily Blunt) and ride along with Buck as the world's spotlight turns back to him for one last time.
About half of the time this movie is about Buck Howard and all of that time is delightful. John Malkovich gives a wonderful performance as a man out of time who is equal parts sincerity, pretense, resentment and resolution. He does what truly great actors do and shows us who Buck Howard is so that we understand him without thinking about it. Buck has a catch phrase he uses in his act and his interaction with the public. It's "I love this town!". Malkovich says it over and over, but the more he says it, the more it starts to mean. At first, he makes it seem like some meaningless shtick. The more he says it, though, you begin to see and hear it as also an expression of the honest joy Buck feels at being able to entertain people. And eventually, Malkovich makes the patented shtick and honest joy blend together in Buck until you can't tell where one stops and the other begins.
Whenever this film is about Buck, whether he's entertaining a crowd or venting his rage at Jay Leno or standing in mute horror at a disruption in his well rehearsed routine, The Great Buck Howard is a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately, it's only about Buck about half the time. The rest of the time it's about Troy and how he sort of comes of age during his time with Buck. None of that stuff is awful, but it's a thoroughly pedestrian tale and it isn't told all that well. To start with, Troy narrates a good bit of the film and most of the narration is about himself. The script allows Malkovich to show us who Buck is, but it forces Hanks to tell us who Troy is. It doesn't work nearly as well and largely prevents the audience from forming a connection with Troy. And when he isn't narrating, Troy basically just stands around while other people do things. There's really no point in this story when he demonstrates any particular intelligence, talent or aptitude, which makes it all the more absurd when other characters tell Troy the being Buck's road manager is somehow beneath him. There isn't a second in this entire thing when Troy looks like he's qualified or capable of being anything except Buck's road manager. And as far as being a coming of age story, here's what happens. Troy falls ass first into one fascinating job, has a hot chick throw herself at him, gets to tag along as Buck re-ascends to major stardom and then lands ass first in yet another dream job that he has done nothing in the entire movie to either earn or deserve. How exactly is this perpetual and mostly painless wish fulfillment supposed to engage the viewer?
But here's where we learn the unfortunate realities of filmmaking. Writer/director Sean McGinley based this script on his time as road manager for the Amazing Kreskin, a widely popular mentalist of the 1960s and 70s. The character of Troy is clearly a stand-in for McGinley himself. Now, you can't blame McGinley for not recognizing that his part of the script was the weakest thing about it and plenty of screenplays get rewritten. Someone could have take the script and reduced and refashioned the part of Troy until the movie was all about Buck Howard and likely the better for it.
That's where Tom Hanks comes in. He's one of the producers of this film and, I think unquestionably, helped get it made because he saw it as a starring vehicle for his son, Colin. If the part of Troy were smaller, it would no longer be a great role for Colin and Tom Hanks, as nice a guy as he may be, probably wouldn't have had any interest in helping this movie become a reality. So the bottom line is that the worst parts of this movie are the main reasons it got made at all.
But even the worst parts of The Great Buck Howard are still okay and the best parts are marvelous family entertainment
much like The Amazing Kreskin himself. It is definitely worth watching.
