Movie Review - Prestige, The

[mclaw666]

[I haven't written a review in a while. I've had to get my groove back. Here it is.]     Oh yeah. I'll warn you once, I spoil the movie.
    There are movies and books about magicians and magic that are wonderful entertainment. "Carter the Great" is one of them, "Grift Sense" is one of them. "Harry Potter" is one of them. The Prestige

Comments

[boffo]

Is your complaint more about the portrayal of magic, or the story itself? I thought as movies The Prestige was much better than The Illusionist, even though the ending of The Prestige was dumb. (Far worse than one of them having a twin was the other having actual magic powers.) But I'm not qualified to talk about the magic.

A Beautiful Mind was terrible with respect to how it explained Economics, and Casino Royale was terrible with respect to poker, but I thought both of those were excellent movies.

[mclaw666]

The story itself wasn't bad; I think that there are better stories out there, that do justice to the magic of and/or from that time period. Consider magic itself to be a character. How is that character portrayed? To me, it comes across as malicious, with no regard for people or animals, which is not what magic is. Take a look at performances from Chun Ling Soo and Robert-Houdin. Magic is "performed," and not simply shown; to them, it's art. Borden and [the otherone] are simply doing tricks to rival another; it takes more to be a performer.

The Illusionist uses magic as an art. It does exceed its time period in its magical effects, and I do question some of the motivations, but I felt it told a better story. If you want an excellent story with magic based on that time period, read "Carter the Great." I think it would have made a better movie than The Prestige.

I didn't see A Beautiful Mind. I also didn't see Casino Royale, but I always thought 007's game was Baccarat. Is that the Peter Sellers one?

[boffo]

Is that the Peter Sellers one? Yes, but that's not the one I'm talking about. I mean the one that came out last year.

In the book it's Baccarat. In the movie, they changed it to Texas Hold 'Em, and handled it really badly.

[sleightgirl]

I didn't like the story or the magic, but I agree with the C+ grade. Also, I loved "Carter the Great", that was definitely a wonderful story.