Les Magouilleurs

The idea is promising: is someone actually trying to kill Penn (following his peculiar request), or is it all a big hoax? But the result is a mess. The script that Penn and Teller wrote is unstructured and complex, and it doesn't seem to have a discernible beginning, middle or end. There is a funny and creative scene in an airport, early on, and then the film goes downhill. The VERY last monologue we hear, however, is kind of clever... (**)

The first time I watched this movie, I was disappointed. The laughs, it seemed, had been few and far between. After watching it again, however, some of the more subtle jokes caught my attention (in a word, Teller's facial expressions), and I found myself watching it yet a third time, and actually enjoying it. In other words, it "grew" on me.

This starts with a recreation of their upside-down trick on SNL like a late night talk show. As an off-handed comment to the host's question, Penn says that he wishes someone would try to kill him for excitement. They and their assistant Carlotta (Caitlin Clarke) are off to expose psychic surgery as fake. Her uncle is being tricked by some con-men.

This movie needs a good writer to write an actual script. Instead, Penn & Teller have written a meandering story. It does have some fun with their pranking and their magic tricks but at some point, I wonder when the story finally gets some traction. It tries to go surreal with Caitlin Clarke playing a completely different character. It takes awhile before I realized that it's not a dream sequence and that it is actually Caitlin Clarke. This is a movie where the concept of the ending supersedes the traditional narrative writing. The guys have a wild idea and write a rambling story to get to the finish. I still do like the absurdity of the ending.

Being a big Penn and Teller fan, and after hearing about this movie I was looking forwards to seeing it, and was gratified when, on a lonely Friday night, I saw it was showing on TV.

It started a little slowly, but I persevered, watching on. Yes it's a mildly amusing film. Certainly it gives us an insight into the world of the magicians, but when it comes down to it, it's simply a series of magic tricks strung together by a very thin plot. The tricks themselves are quite impressive, but in no way are they comparable to the magnificence of the duos live shows. It just doesn't compete. Worth watching but don't look forwards to anything special.

A movie no Penn & Teller fan would dream of being without. The first time I watched it, I was perplexed by the oddball atmosphere - this movie just doesn't play like a typical movie. Subsequent viewings have increased my fondness for it, though, and I keep finding more and more humour in it. So much of the humour comes from realizing that the jokes are not just inserted to make us laugh, but are the natural product of a very bizarre world that these two performers are inhabiting all the time. As Teller in a park catches pigeons with his bare hands, Penn says admiringly, "You're getting really good at that. You don't even hurt them anymore." Anymore? What has been going on between Teller and the pigeons all these years? The film is full of these little glimpses into a very weird world.