Anyone who remembers a certain kind of 1970s showbiz personality will spot a recognizable type in “The Great Buck Howard.”
This mild yarn is about one such dinosaur, a “mentalist” known as, well, the Great Buck Howard.
Buck, played by John Malkovich, always reminds people that he appeared 61 times on “The Tonight Show” during Johnny Carson’s reign. He’s part mind-reader, part magician and an all-around trickster.
These days Buck is on a circuit of tiny halls and small-town civic centers — sort of like the guy in “The Wrestler” but without the staple-gun to the face. This is where we pick him up as he hires a new assistant, young Troy (Colin Hanks).
Troy is just aimless and curious enough to take on the job of shepherding this fussy narcissist around from one second-rate gig to another.
Out of these episodes comes writer-director Sean McGinly’s movie, which never quite builds to much even if the show business milieu is ably captured.
Buck Howard appears to be a version of The Amazing Kreskin, the nerdy and ingratiating mentalist who indeed racked up many a talk-show appearance back in the ’70s.
In Malkovich’s performance, certain Kreskin mannerisms — his elaborately exaggerated style of shaking hands, for instance — are kept intact. Elsewhere, Malkovich creates his own kind of trademark weirdness, which suits this relic of another era of entertainment.
Emily Blunt, also seen this week in “Sunshine Cleaning,” plays a publicist who gets involved with Troy. The actress has so much innate glamour that she can’t help seeming above the level of Hanks’ scrabbling assistant. It’s not easy to buy that part of the picture.
Hanks brings such a detached style to his characterization that the movie tends to idle in neutral for far too long.
His father, Tom Hanks, helped produce the film, which explains a couple of scenes featuring the elder Mr. Hanks as Troy’s father, who disapproves of his son’s excursion into the business of show.
Tom Hanks is such an alert, juiced-up actor that when he comes on the scene, he jolts the film into another gear. This, unfortunately, does not reflect well on the other 95 percent of the movie, which ambles along until it finally seems to just peter out altogether.
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