The Great Buck Howard

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The Great Buck Howard

PG

2009

1h 30m

Comedy

Drama

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Popcornmeter

70%

Tomatometer

94 Reviews

49%

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25,000+ Ratings

Defying his father and dropping out of law school, aspiring writer Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) looks for a way to gain some meaningful life experience. Troy gets that and more when he takes a job with Buck Howard (John Malkovich), a vainglorious mentalist who hopes to reinvigorate his fading career by staging a big comeback.

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Critics Consensus

By turns fluffy and biting, this show biz comedy is given girth by comic heavyweight John Malkovich and made all the more charming by Emily Blunt.

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Leo Goldsmith

IndieWire

Malkovich's titular mentalist is the primary focus of attention%u2014and sadly the source of many of the film's unique problems. In a career of strange performances, Malkovich turns in a true curiosity here%u2014and maybe it's because he is not, for once,

Aug 8, 2009

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Jonathan F. Richards

Film.com

This is not a rare movie, but it does have a warm red center. It's likable, and its appeal grows as it recovers from a shaky start and finds its footing.

Apr 9, 2009

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Amy Biancolli

Houston Chronicle

A modest snapshot of a performer.

Rated: 3/4

Apr 3, 2009

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Kathy Fennessy

Seattle Film Blog

Produced by Tom Hanks's Playtone banner, The Great Buck Howard follows the rise, fall, and rise template of many Hanks productions (see Starter for Ten and his own That Thing You Do!), but [Sean] McGinly handles a large cast with ease.

Rated: 3/4

Jul 20, 2024

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Brian Eggert

Deep Focus Review

The film’s light comedy is very light, inspiring chuckles right through without ever making us weep for the characters or bust a gut from laughter.

Rated: 2.5/4

Dec 2, 2023

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Felicia Feaster

Charleston City Paper

The Great Buck Howard has a pleasantly rueful approach. Instead of the scatological humor in raucous bromances like I Love You, Man, The Great Buck Howard offers a more low-key thoughtfulness about how success is defined.

Jan 27, 2020

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Steve D

The cast is all it has.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

10/07/23

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Gareth v

Feel good dramedy that is carried by the performance of Malkovich and the underrated Blunt.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

06/21/23

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Audience Member

Truly one of the most pointless and boring films I've ever seen. I've seen more pointless, and I've seen more boring but this one propels further away from entertaining or compelling than most films I've seen. It relies almost entirely on sappy sentimentalism, which in itself isn't very profound, unique, or lasting. It also seems a bit disingenuous. It's the kind of sentimentality you see from high ranking officials mourning a dead comrade in old Soviet times when you know damn well they had the person killed to begin with and never liked the person.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/20/23

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dave s

In The Great Buck Howard, Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) is a law school student who, in a bout of existential angst, quits school and lands a job as the road manager for the washed-up mentalist Buck Howard (John Malkovich) and winds up falling in love with a publicist (Emily Blunt) brought in to bolster Buck's flailing career. The premise is great, but the movie flounders by putting the focus on Hanks' drab character and his seemingly pointless romance instead of centering everything around Buck Howard, the only truly interesting character in the film. There are some laughs, but the flaccid script misses the mark more often than not. Malkovich's enthusiastic performance as the delusional and self-centered egomaniac is probably reason enough to watch, but the lasting memory that the film will have is probably the wooden acting performance of Hanks, who proves that acting talent is not hereditary.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

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farah r

This is not the movie I expected it would be with such a cast. The Great Buck Howard is far from great, in fact t's awful.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

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Audience Member

Wonderfully acted by an excellent cast, this oddball comedy is only compromised by its rather meandering screenplay (by director Sean McGinley). Colin Hanks - whose dad plays his screen dad - narrates how he gave up law school to work for has been mentalist Buck Howard (John Malkovich, brilliant). Emily Blunt, Griffin Dunne and others bolster the simple story, but it's Malkovich's show.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

Full Review

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Sean McGinly

Director

John Malkovich

Buck Howard

Colin Hanks

Troy Gabel

Emily Blunt

Valerie Brennan

Steve Zahn

Kenny

Tom Hanks

Mr. Gable

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Synopsis

Defying his father and dropping out of law school, aspiring writer Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) looks for a way to gain some meaningful life experience. Troy gets that and more when he takes a job with Buck Howard (John Malkovich), a vainglorious mentalist who hopes to reinvigorate his fading career by staging a big comeback.

Director: Sean McGinly
Producer: Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman
Screenwriter: Sean McGinly
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Production Co: Playtone Productions
Rating: PG (Suggestive Remarks|Some Language|A Drug Reference)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Mar 20, 2009, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Jul 22, 2010
Box Office (Gross USA): $748.4K
Runtime: 1h 30m

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