All Critics (184)
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Top Critics (39)
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Fresh (144)
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Rotten (50)
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DVD (32)
The line between truth and illusion is blurred so persuasively that for a moment or two, you may even believe that a romantic costume drama could stand up to all those special-effects blockbusters in the dog days of summer.
What (director Neil) Burger and his colleagues have done is to entrance us with a richly acted, beautifully produced story.
Conjures up a world of mystery, romance and suspense.
Norton is a magnetic and mysterious center to the piece, boring his eyes through the screen with his intensity.
The story may be less than credible, but the performances are mostly good, and Giamatti makes an especially strong showing.
A pleasant diversion serious enough to offer a little soul.
A fond animated farewell to Jacques Tati
If nothing else, The Illusionist is worth watching solely for Giamatti's Oscar-caliber performance.
A wonderful period film first and secondarily an interesting mystery-romance that keeps you guessing about the big questions until late in the narrative.
Norton and Paul Giamatti perform wonders, but writer/director Neil Burger ruins the magic, exposing all of his story's tricks by the end.
Unabashedly old-fashioned and fantastically pulpy.
Straddles fascination and irritation
Director Neil Burger effectively evokes a sense of mystery and magic, but the plot grinds too methodically to match the dazzle of the title character's on-stage illusions.
An immaculate and utterly gorgeous murder mystery with the trifecta of wonderful direction, great acting, and a plot that twists and turns at every such occasion.
A well-acted, aesthetically lovely movie.
Magic tricks and a murder mystery. Teens and up.
Never quite the sum of its parts, this would-be intelligent thriller coasts by on strong supporting performances from Giamatti, Sewell and Biel.
Just as two Truman Capote biopics came in subsequent Oscar seasons, so two period films about stage magicians appear with only winter to separate them. And, frankly, The Illusionist has missed a trick.
Despite its two strong lead performances and terrific visual verve, The Illusionist ends up as a great example of an overly ambitious movie that's not quite sure what it wants to be.
An early flashback scene indicates how The Illusionist might have played like The Princess Bride for the tea and scone set. Instead it's just a nobly acted stage mystery.
Norton looks tortured and old before his time as the humourless Eisenheim.
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