Never count out John Malkovich.  Just when you think the guy has nothing new to offer and that you can pigeonhole him as a psychotic or a heavy, he turns right back around and gives you a performance you didn't expect and one you won't soon forget.  He doesn't always hit it out of the park but he certainly does with "The Great Buck Howard" and elevates a cutesy, safe indie comedy into a worthwhile experience.

Colin Hanks plays Troy Gabel who is kind of an amalgam of his characters from "Orange County" and "King Kong": he's an aspiring writer that wants to get in to wacky situations and he works as an assistant to an outsized personality; in this case, it's the mentalist Buck Howard (Malkovich).  Buck has been on the decline.  While he played the Johnny Carson show 61 times, he now plays small-town auditoriums where there's not a lot of competition for entertainment but he still can't pack the house. 

I was a bit worried when we're first introduced to Buck because his vigorous handshake and larger-than-life demeanor gave me a sinking feeling that we may just be watching an SNL character extended to feature length.  Thankfully, Malkovich knows just how to play the role and while Buck's act is impressive if at times incredibly cheesy and self-indulgent, Malkovich makes the character relatable by making him like every egotistical and overly demanding boss you've ever had but tempered with the gentleness and malapropisms of an aging grand-parent.  We never know quite how to feel about Buck and I applaud that aspect of the film.  Sadly, the rest of it falls absolutely flat.

Despite his famous father's credentials, Colin Hanks has yet to find Tom Hanks' success and that's probably because while they're both credible everymen, Tom found a way to pair his everyman without out-sized circumstances.  Colin is just an everyman in everyday circumstances and there's very little passion, humor, or really any emotion one can gather from him.  He's functional enough as the audience surrogate but there's nothing to him other than he wants to be a writer and not a lawyer.  Yippee.  And this lack of personality carries over to the reliable Emily Blunt who plays an equally-bored publicist who has nothing to play off of.  The two hook up in the film and develop a relationship but there's zero chemistry and zero credibility to their fling. 

When Sundance and other film festival accept films like "The Great Buck Howard" they do themselves a disservice because while it does feature a fantastic performance by Malkovich, it's a very soft film that is in no way challenging and if you're not going to use your independence to create a film that's outside what Hollywood would do, then what's the point?  What distributor would shy away from this film?  It's another example of how "indie" now just means "lower-budget" and there's nothing really independent about the material.  The only reason this movie needs a big screen is to hold the greatness that Malkovich provides.