Marvelous and the Black Hole

Sometimes the acting is stiff and sometimes the plot points are routine, but overall, it’s a transformative magic act, taking the familiar and using a few flourishes and sparkles to turn it into something magical.

While par for the course in terms of its premise as well as much of its plotting, “Marvelous and the Black Hole” is still somewhat refreshing in its visual style and experimentation.

A set-your-watch-by-it riff on the unlikely-friendship-helps-two-lonely-people formula, this time involving a troubled schoolgirl and a stage magician, it is however so nicely performed and takes such honest pleasure in the flourishes of its little magic show, that only a hard heart would mention that the palmed coins and hidden cards of its construction were visible all along.

Marvelous and the Black Hole is a satisfying showcase from Tsang, who really draws from her animation background to show these moments of intense emotion from Sammy, but its broad strokes are a little...broad.

There’s not a whole lot to this, but Tsang injects a lot of visual variety, and a few laughs, into “The Black Hole” that Sammy must magically extract herself from.

Writer/director Kate Tsang cleverly straddles childhood fantasy with the baser impulses of adolescence, drawing an angsty portrait of teenage girlhood in transition. But even as a movie geared towards young adults, Marvelous and the Black Hole feels innocent to a fault.

Cech is believable as a troubled teenager, and it’s refreshing to see an Asian American girl as a protagonist, but the film has a limited emotional range, jumping among several plot elements without fully fleshing them out.