Movie(s) Review: "The Illusionist" and "The Prestige"
Do you ever wish you could rewrite movies? I really felt that way after recently watching The Illusionist and The Prestige back to back. I love watching magic tricks. Even when I know how they're done, I love seeing how the illusion happens. Both of these movies are about magicians who lose the woman they love, both have startling twist endings, and both made me roll my eyes.
One problem with The Illusionist is that the illusions are not possible, at least, not without a massive computer graphics effort. That a turn-of-the-century magician could produce these effects is ridiculous.
My main problem with this movie, however, is its tone. After SOMETHING BAD happens, it is very depressed for most of the rest. There is no reason for this. Instead of feeling depressed because SOMETHING BAD happened, the magician could have been angry and vengeful instead. The actual plot result would have been identical, but the audience would have been spared an hour or so of feeling really crappy.
In The Prestige, the final trick is impossible. Not just hard, but impossible. Saying that Nikola Tesla dreamed it up did nothing to change my mind. Introducing impossibilities into a movie slams the brakes on my suspension of disbelief and, believe me, I am really good at suspending disbelief. So, that was a major problem.
Plus (or Minus), besides there being something actually impossible, there was something so improbable, that it was close to impossible. A person does something in this movie that no person would ever do. No one. No one has ever done this, and no one ever will do this. So, besides physical impossibility, we also have to swallow psychological impossibility. Sorry.
Also, the two magicians in The Prestige carry on a vicious quarrel that I tired of really quickly. My feeling was that I was being dragged along to a fight I didn't want to get involved in. I don't know if we're supposed to identify with or sympathize with one or the other, but my feeling by the end was that they were both pig-headed dolts who both deserved to get sawn in half. Only one does die, so that was disappointing.
The Prestige was also badly non-chronological. There were many points where I couldn't tell occurrences in the present day from occurrences in one of several past periods. There was no point to this. They could have told the story in straight chronological order, and not lost anything.
On the plus side, The Prestige did have Michael Caine, who makes anything better.
You've been warned.
Do you ever wish you could rewrite movies? I really felt that way after recently watching The Illusionist and The Prestige back to back. I love watching magic tricks. Even when I know how they're done, I love seeing how the illusion happens. Both of these movies are about magicians who lose the woman they love, both have startling twist endings, and both made me roll my eyes.
One problem with The Illusionist is that the illusions are not possible, at least, not without a massive computer graphics effort. That a turn-of-the-century magician could produce these effects is ridiculous.
My main problem with this movie, however, is its tone. After SOMETHING BAD happens, it is very depressed for most of the rest. There is no reason for this. Instead of feeling depressed because SOMETHING BAD happened, the magician could have been angry and vengeful instead. The actual plot result would have been identical, but the audience would have been spared an hour or so of feeling really crappy.
In The Prestige, the final trick is impossible. Not just hard, but impossible. Saying that Nikola Tesla dreamed it up did nothing to change my mind. Introducing impossibilities into a movie slams the brakes on my suspension of disbelief and, believe me, I am really good at suspending disbelief. So, that was a major problem.
Plus (or Minus), besides there being something actually impossible, there was something so improbable, that it was close to impossible. A person does something in this movie that no person would ever do. No one. No one has ever done this, and no one ever will do this. So, besides physical impossibility, we also have to swallow psychological impossibility. Sorry.
Also, the two magicians in The Prestige carry on a vicious quarrel that I tired of really quickly. My feeling was that I was being dragged along to a fight I didn't want to get involved in. I don't know if we're supposed to identify with or sympathize with one or the other, but my feeling by the end was that they were both pig-headed dolts who both deserved to get sawn in half. Only one does die, so that was disappointing.
The Prestige was also badly non-chronological. There were many points where I couldn't tell occurrences in the present day from occurrences in one of several past periods. There was no point to this. They could have told the story in straight chronological order, and not lost anything.
On the plus side, The Prestige did have Michael Caine, who makes anything better.
You've been warned.
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