Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box

You know a movie which starts by a ten minutes long presentation of the theatre's sound system is not gonna rely too much on your central nervous system for understanding. IMAX movies belong to this kind. I knew it, yet nothing could have prepared me for the experience in deep stupidity that is the viewing of this film.

The story is told as if the audience had an IQ of 4. It is empty and vain. I wont even speak about it, it fills me with dismay.

The purpose of IMAX is to have spectacular shots. The excerpts from Sieg&Roy performances are really great and a pleasure to see, although the very nature of performance magic loses its interest on film.

However, these beautiful shots add up to a very little part, maybe 10%, of the movie time. The rest is storytelling so rotten it gives the creeps, and computer generated "stuff" that is at the same time technically awful and aesthetically extremely ugly and pointless. On the technical side, you can see the pixels in the image and the pixels in the (ugly) textures ; and on the aesthetic side, it's JUST PLAIN UGLINESS that you can witness in glorious 3-D and surround sound. I'll say it another time. IT'S A-F***IN UGLY !

One could say that, well, they intended to have that "cardboard" look for whatever artistic reason. But no. The word "artistic" cannot be associated with this film.

A troubling thing is also this repressed homosexuality which oozes fron the two "heroes" ; by the end it is pretty obvious that they probably do more than just magic together, and we dont see a single woman in the entire movie except their mothers and some dancers. And they show them living happily together with all their white tigers in their mutimillion ranch. Well well. I would have built a shrine to this director for having put out the first french kiss between two guys on IMAX close-up. But he didnt do it. He chose hypocrisy instead.

By the way, the director also directed "The Lawnmover Man", which seems fitting, in the end.

The IMDB lists this one as a "documentary." It's more like a 40-minute commercial, written by Siegfried & Roy themselves. At no point do you feel you've learned anything new about these carefully coiffed slight-of-hand experts. The first half of the production spins a magical tale of how fate brought the two European artistes together and eventually made them the toast of Sin City. The last half of the film indelicately drives home the point that Siegfried & Roy's animals live pampered, un-abused existences on the pair's luxurious Las Vegas estate (the only thing that could have made this sequence more obvious would have been a subtitle that read "Take that, PETA!"). Yes, it's filled with fancy 3-D effects, not to mention all those magic tricks that have made this decrepit duo two of the biggest stars on the Vegas Strip. But the best trick doesn't even happen on the screen. It takes place at the box office before the show even starts when you're duped into forking over eight bucks for a so-called "documentary" that turns out to be forty minutes of fluff.

My wife and I are big fans of S&R. We used to see there show one a year during our really holiday which we (almost) always spend in the US. So when I discovered this DVD both of us felt the urge :We must have this!" since we have about everything one can get from them.

That said. It was nice to see and I wouldn't have wanted to miss it but all in all it was a disappointment. There are no 3D effects, worse I distinctly have the feeling that they simply copied a VHS tape to DVD! It looks just as grainy as all my own VHS -> DVD movies.

So those that have really enjoyed S&R I would advise them to certainly buy it (cost me less than 5 dollar!) but don'g get your hopes set too high.

There is a mistake on the credits of this movie that I would like to set straight.

Kaelee Brown (sp) is listed as the Visual Effects Coordinator for this film. That is incorrect. I was the VFX Coordinator on the film, but failed to get the credit because I quit prior to the completion of post-production. Kaelee Brown was the girlfriend of Unit Production Manager, Neal Allen. Kaelee came on for a few weeks in the end and got the credit because of that connection. Due to the fact that this was a non-union shoot, I had no recourse to get the credit changed. I have attempted to contact both producer Michael Lewis and Director Brett Leonard, but the production company (L-Squared) is no longer in business, and they will not answer e-mails.

I am no longer in Visual Effects, but it would still be nice to be credited for the 16-hour days I put in on the shoot.

Why I quit is another story involving Visual Effects Producer, Kymber Lim, who has gone on to much success - and I'm sure her lying and back-stabbing has helped. That's why I left.

It is a pretty cool flick, though. Even if you're not an S&R fan.

DJR

I've never been to Las Vegas, I've never seen S&R show, and all my knowledge about them comes from Father of the Pride series. Still, this movie was definitely worth watching and very enjoyable.

By today's standards, the movie lacks in graphics and in scientific approach. I would have so much preferred to watch it without all these ridiculous and silly "effects" which may have been impressive a decade ago, but now look cheap. Special effects should help viewers immerse in the movie, not exist by themselves. But this knowledge comes with time and a decade ago these effects were the way to go, so I'm not to blame the authors. Another problem is that today everyone knows that there's no such thing as a "white lion breed", so what S&R did isn't environment preservation in any way.

But... the way S&R treat their animals and interact with them warms my heart. I don't advocate using animals in circuses, but I know for sure S&R love them and never treat them badly (just google for "Make sure no harm comes to Montecore").

The way S&R portray their childhood memories, children's perception of the world is interesting and fun to watch. This is as documentary as Simba's singing I Just Can't Wait To Be King in The Lion King is. But still, it's fun.

The music, the narration are top notch too.

The sad thing about the film is that there's a very high quality IMAX filmstrip lying somewhere, but we won't get to see it...