The Great Buck Howard, starring John Malkovich, Emily Blunt, Colin Hanks, Tom Hanks, Griffin Dunne and Steve Zahn, first premiered at Sundance this year to little fanfare. Ok, some fanfare, but not the kind you want repeated.

For instance, The Playlist describes it thusly:

The main problem with ‘Howard’ is that it can’t decide if it’s supposed to be a 20-s0mething coming-of-age story for young Hanks or a odd couple relationship story for him and the magician Malkovich, but it fails at either. By the end we’re supposed to ascertain that Hanks learned something from the odd experience of tour managing an goofy and losing psychic, but we’re not sure what exactly. Go your own way? Choose your own destiny in life? Insert cliche here? We learn absolutely nothing about what makes Buck Howard tick other than he genuinely enjoys what he does and entertaining people, but there’s little revealed behind the psychology of it.

Although Magnolia is listed as the distributer of the film, the IMDB page for it is still sans release date, implying that its recent appearence in upstate New York at the Woodstock Film Festival didn’t result in the film getting a distributor.

The preview (below the cut) makes the movie out to be little more than John Malkovich chewing the various crowd-filled scenery, which doesn’t sound all that bad considering flicks like Beverly Hills Chihuahua can hold the #1 spot for two weeks in a row.