Houdini, l'illusionniste

The History Channel has been Accused of Escaping from the Real Life Story of the 20th Century's Most Renowned and Recognizable Stage Showman/Magician and Delivering a Spiffed Up Glossy Conglomerate of Psycho-Babble and Stiff Characters.

Adrian Brody does Fine as the Charismatic Curmudgeon of the Spiritualists and Highly Successful Performer that Searches Diligently for the Next Illusion and Death be Damned. This Takes a Toll on His Wife Along with the Burden of a Mother Fixation.

But it's Obvious He does Love His Wife although She Seems to be Playing Third Fiddle to Mom and His Obsession with The Act. This All Makes for Good Drama, but Wait there's More.

We are Informed through some Pretty Bad Dialog and at Times Even Worse Narration that All of this is Playing with Houdini's Head, or at Least the Performer was a Heady Individual.

The Usually Good Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer's Sub-Par Script is Less than Insightful and not Very Witty. It is Downright Dull at Times. What Saves this 2-Part TV Mini-Series from Awfulness is Brody's Energy, the Art-Design, Costumes, and General Look of the Thing.

The Movie is Guilty of Over-Exposing and Telegraphing the Ending with Way too Many Scenes of Houdini's Innards. Ironically with All of the Money Spent on the CGI the Most Impressive Ambiance here is the Vintage Posters that are Everywhere and Use the Original Artwork with Brody's Face Inserted.

Slightly Above Average for This Type of Thing but it's Strength is not its History, but the Sheer Dynamism as a Person and Performer along with His Hyper-Volatility and Fascinating Life that was "The Great Houdini".

This is definitely a modern miniseries.

Quick editing, fancy graphics and lots of slow motion effects. It even has some CSI-like visuals where you get to see how the muscles of the abdomen react to a direct punch and other similar graphics that usually appear in the CSI franchise.

The music is a mix of classic instruments, heavy metal guitars and synthesizers and adds to the modern feel of the show.

Harry Houdini is presented as a bigger than life character who quickly becomes rich and famous with his wit and boldness. Fame and fortune isn't enough though. He wants to be legendary. Also he wants to make his life count, so in this version he becomes an international spy who uses his performances in Germany and in Russia to gather intelligence before the first world war.

Adrien Brody is good enough as Harry Houdini and his narration, that you can hear throughout the episode, contributes to the dramatic tension that you may think that the show is lacking because of its very modern presentation.

Overall: A series worth watching for entertainment. From a biographical point of view you may want to look elsewhere.

It seems in the interest of inspiring awe, the creators of this series removed all of the actual awe around this legendary person and replaced it with annoying effects and hurried editing. The voice-over narration is uninspired, and makes the genius Houdini sound like a nitwit. The relationship between him and his family is reduced down to clichés and is indicative of lazy screen writing.

The worst part is that the actual history and character of Houdini is astounding and truly awe-inspiring. It doesn't need bells and whistles to be entertaining. All of this extra fluff was completely unnecessary and removes from the entertainment.

Houdini is a two-part, four-hour History channel event miniseries written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Uli Edel.

The miniseries follows the man( Adrien Brody ) behind the magic as he finds fame, engages in espionage, battles spiritualists and encounters the greatest names of the era. The drama will chronicle the life of a man who can defy death through his stunts, his visions and his mastery of illusion. It was shot entirely in Budapest, Hungary (coincidentally the real Harry Houdini's birthplace). Brody, who had studied magic as a child, performed many of the show's stunts himself, including the suspended strait jacket escape and the famous Chinese Water Torture Cell.

Harry Houndini was a great magician, showman, and at least according to his own legend, a fascinating character. But this doesn't mean that his life story is actually a single great narrative. This glossy renditioning of his biography leaves (too) little to the imagination; yet it's continuously straining, trying to find a uniting theme that means something more than the birth, extraordinary career, and death of one man. In places, the over-stretched story makes little sense: it's understandable that Houdini's assistant should have been grief-stricken by news of his death, but not that this should make him want to destroy all of his master's equipment. Aiden Brody has been good in other stuff, but in this role, there's a lot of screen time and not much to do with it. I could imagine Houdini playing a role in a clever-clever drama not unlike Nic Roeg's 'Insignificance'; but as a biographic hero, this is obvious and surprisingly dull stuff.