There's an entire level of show business rarely treated seriously or respectfully by movies. There are many entertainers out there who go from one small city auditorium to another, criss-crossing the country time after time. Sometimes they get a few weeks in Vegas, Branson or Miami; sometimes they turn up as the second or third tier guest on a TV talk show. They're known but not really famous; they work hard, they seem to enjoy the careers they have, and there are a lot of them.
One is The Amazing Kreskin, a cheerful, likeable guy who was a regular for a decade of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He still turns up occasionally, but mostly his time is spent going from this one-night stand to that one in rapid succession. The theaters are never jammed, but he makes a living. One element of his act is to have the audience hide his paycheck, planting it on someone in the audience; Kreskin returns from back stage, moves through the audience, and then turns up the check. (Wikipedia says that over the decades, Kreskin has failed to find the check only nine times out of hundreds of shows.)
Sean McGinly, dissatisfied, dropped out of law school; without any particular ambitions, he wound up as the road manager for The Amazing Kreskin. He used his experiences as the basis for this screenplay, a good-natured, affectionate tale of the sort of seedy side of showbiz. Here, Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) drops out of law school to the annoyance of his father (Tom Hanks, Colin's father), and haphazardly winds up the road manager to mentalist Buck Howard (John Malkovich). Almost as soon as he's hired, he has to help set up Buck's show in a civic theater in Bakersfield.
There's very little story to "The Great Buck Howard" and characterization isn't what writer-director McGinly is really going for. It's more a kind of slice-of-life dramedy, what happens to Troy as he accompanies Buck Howard on his usual tour of the country. His act is much like the Amazing Kreskin's, although he also sings (badly); he does do Kreskin's finding-the-money trick; here, it's cash rather than a check, but the setup is the same.
Along the way, junior publicist Valerie Brennan (Emily Blunt) arrives from New York, knowing nothing at all about Buck Howard, but that was true for Troy as well. This only slightly annoys Buck Howard; by now, he's used to being known only to people as old as he, but he's still irritated by Valerie's inability to field a troupe of national press for his big new event, staged in Cincinnati--he puts 200 or so people to sleep en masse. But the press (only locals) had to rush off when former Cincinnati mayor and TV star Jerry Springer is in an auto accident nearby. It doesn't help that Buck hasn't the faintest notion who Springer is.
Despite being somewhat wispy, "The Great Buck Howard" is almost as charming and endearing as its title character, a sort of low-key flamboyant showman. He still dresses in the rich, unusual colors of clothes of the 1970s (the last time he could be regarded as actually famous)--wine-colored shirts, orange jackes, loud but not patterned ties. He even turns up in an ascot at one point; in an outtake, Buck confides to someone that he and Liberace have the same tailor. He's usually enthusiastic about each new city--"I love this town!" he invariably exclaims, often as he's shaking hands with a wild, vigorous serptentine movement. He loves his own act; when he correctly names the number an audience member selects, he always calls out "Isn't that wild!? That's wild!"
We don't really learn very much about Buck Howard the person; even Toby can't say whether his boss is gay or straight. Buck has a serious temper problem, but rarely raises his voice, rarely makes angry gestures--it's all in his tight-lipped face. When his Cincinnati contacts, Doreen (Debra Monk) and her brother Kenny (Steve Zahn), become more excited over Valerie, because she knows Jay Leno, than over him, Buck--who has no love for Leno, who's never invited him on his show--is almost prissily angry. On stage, Buck Howard is cheesily charming--he's actually good at what he does (no one can figure out how he finds the money), he's good with the shrinking audiences he attracts, and he absolutely loves being on stage. Off-stage his life is primarily a matter of getting ready to go back on stage. He tends to be a little dictatorial, ruled by his temper a bit more often than is useful, and remains personally aloof.
Malkovich is fascinating in the role, radically different from all his others, which may be a reason he took it. He gives Buck Howard an almost childlike enthusiasm which can easily sour into petulance and pomposity. But he quickly bounces back, recharging himself by doing his familiar act once again. He never sees, probably never even realizes, the phoniness of his "I love this town!" exclamation--mostly because even though he's never been to this particular town before, right now he loves it because its his newest venue. He has no great goals for his slowly fading career; he's content working on this lesser level of show business. It's an oddly ingratiating performance--odd because Malkovich himself is anything but ingratiating; he's a cold but not distant actor, here playing a warm but distant man. Buck Howard is a peculiarly good fit to his talents.
The movie isn't judging Buck Howard, it's merely observing him with a certain affection and yet a certain realism. Movies like this are usually harsh but simultaneously sentimental about the show biz icon at their centers, but here we get none of the usual stereotypes or clichés. Buck is presented realistically, and yet with distant but real affection. He's been calling himself The Great Buck Howard ever since Johnny Carson once introduced him as "the great" Buck Howard. He's always introduced by the same recorded spiel he carries with him everywhere. He's never remotely lovable, but he's always, sometimes frustratingly, likeable.
It's a little odd for a medium-budget movie like this one to be made available in high definition Blu-ray, but it's an unexpectedly good fit, entirely appropriate. The colors are rich yet muted, natural and attractive. Toward the end of the film, Buck briefly regains a bit of his fame and appears in rapid succession on well-known TV shows (we see Jon Stewart, Regis & Kelly, Conan O'Brien, Tom Arnold and others); when he's on Martha Stewart's show, she remarks that he seems to have had some "work" done on his face. Buck denies this as the camera clearly shows that yes, he has had some work done (a Malkovich suggestion; he has grasped his character perfectly). There's nothing special about the sound here, but the visual details due to the high definition infuse the movie and affect the viewer almost subliminally. The movie is distinctly and pleasantly, but never flamboyantly, enhanced by the greater visual richness of high definition.
Colin Hanks is developing into an able leading man; he'll probably spend much of his career on TV and in independent films like this one, but like that of Buck Howard, it will be a career he likes, and is therefore well spent. Emily Blunt is cute, perky and smart as the publicist (and does a perfect American accent). The movie is full of well-known faces in smaller roles, sometimes as themselves, as when Buck encounters Jack Carter and George Takei (there's an amusing, barely discernible undercurrent regarding Takei that turns up again occasionally). Ricky Jay, Griffin Dunne, Patrick Fischler, Wallance Langham, Don Most and Matthew Grey Gubler (of "Criminal Minds") pop in for short scenes. And of course, there's also Tom Hanks, welcome and effective. His production company also backed the film.
"The Great Buck Howard" isn't a great movie--with this material and approach, it couldn't have been. But that's not a failure, it's a kind of modest strength. It's a likeable, almost adorable movie, well worth the time of anyone who has affection for people who enjoy just getting along.
Video quality: Not showy but nicely detailed with very good use of color, here presented satisfyingly realistically
Sound quality: Adequate
Actors: Colin Hanks, Tom Hanks, John Malkovich, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Ricky Jay
Director/writer: Sean McGinly
Keywords: Mentalist, show business, backstage, Malkovich, Americana
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