Magicians (2007)
The most baffling thing about Magicians is what it does with the two people it hired to carry the whole thing. David Mitchell and Robert Webb, Peep Show royalty and one of the sharpest comedy pairings British television has produced in years, are kept apart for the bulk of the runtime. A film built around a double act that refuses to let them double act. That is not an oversight. That is the premise eating itself.
Andrew O'Connor's 2007 comedy follows two estranged rival magicians dragged back together for a competition, which, on paper, is a perfectly reasonable comic setup. You have the talent. You have the premise. You have a supporting cast that includes Peter Capaldi and Jessica Hynes, two performers who have absolutely no business being this wasted. And yet here we are. The film takes all of that and somehow produces something slow, charmless and almost entirely mirthless. I have seen magic shows where the trick goes visibly wrong and the audience still has more fun than this.
The acting throughout is genuinely woeful, which is the thing that keeps stopping me in my tracks even now. Not because the cast lack ability, clearly they do not, but because everyone here seems to be performing in a slightly different, slightly wrong register, as though they collectively received contradictory directions and just went with their gut. It does not cohere. It does not crackle. It just sits there.
And the script gives nobody much to work with. There is none of the caustic wit you associate with Mitchell and Webb at their best, none of the social awkwardness weaponised so brilliantly in Peep Show. The story limps from scene to scene, marking time rather than building anything. If you are coming in hoping for even a fraction of the craft and psychological tension that made The Prestige so compelling, a film I absolutely adored, adjust your expectations downward significantly. Then adjust them down again. The gap between the two films is not a gap so much as a geological feature.
I will be honest: I had form with this one. I bought it when it first came out, watched it, thought it was dreadful, and stuck it on the shelf accordingly. Revisiting it years later, I did at least entertain the possibility that I had been too harsh. It happens. Memory flatters some films and unfairly bruises others, and I have been caught out in both directions before. But no. This is that comparatively rare case where the memory served me with complete accuracy. It is every bit as flat and joyless as I recalled, possibly more so, because now I can see all the wasted potential more clearly rather than just feeling vaguely annoyed by it.
Even devoted Mitchell and Webb fans, and I count myself firmly among them, will find precious little to hold on to. The odd moment hints at what this could have been if someone had trusted the performers and actually written them some material, but those moments are isolated and brief and surrounded by so much dead air that they barely register. You come away less disappointed than simply puzzled. How do you take ingredients this good and produce something this inert?
Two stars, and a dispiriting waste of two comedians who deserved so much better.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2026-09-04
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