I guess I was on a roll with “movies I’d intended to watch for ages” by the time I got to this one, lol. I was kinda crazy for Penn and Teller when I was a teenager and they were first becoming popular on UK television. I even bought their book, I seem to recall, but then they seemed to vanish for years until their recent newfound popularity with the “Bullsh*t” series and now back to doing stage magic around the world.
The reviews I’d read for this were overall so-so, even those coming from apparent fellow fans of the duo, and despite there being a decent director at the helm (Arthur Penn, of Alice’s Restaurant, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Miracle Worker, albethey years before this) I guess this is why I’d passed on it for so long (in addition to its being widely unavailable outside of pricey imports).
So to the movie, and I have to start with the brilliant tagline (as seen on this poster)… “What more do you want?” with which I couldn’t agree more. This movie within minutes took me back to my excitement as a teenager whenever these guys were on TV. It opens with them on a late night talk show doing their “upside down” gravity-defying table trick, after which Penn idly comments to the host that he wishes someone were trying to kill him. In the scenes that follow it is entertainingly set up that Penn and Teller are fond of pranking one another (and not just small pranks either; early in the game Teller sets Penn up at airport security getting through the metal scanner). The stakes get higher as the movie progresses, the pranks escalating to the point where the line between fake and real begins to blur, and, without trying to spoil anything too much, let’s just say this movie really does deliver what it promises, lol.
The final scenes had me laughing so much, actually out of shock I think more than anything, that I really couldn’t believe my eyes when I read so many disappointed opinions on the IMDb message board and comments. As the tagline suggests, I really don’t know what more anybody could expect from a Penn and Teller movie. It’s brisk at 90 minutes, it has a few magic tricks, a lot of fake blood, a healthy lesson in skepticism, and finally an all-out f**k you in its finale. It really is worth checking out.


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