James Randi, A.K.A. The Amazing Randi, loves a good trick, but loathes a trickster who misuses it. No one can humiliate a charlatan like Randi can. That’s because he knows ALL of the tricks. He should. Randi spent the first phase of his career emulating and outdoing Harry Houdini’s insanely dangerous escape feats. He’s a man devoted to magic—and science. He’s lived his life fooling people and is perpetually fascinated by the many ways to do it and how easy it can be to get away with it. What makes Randi a scientist at heart is that he always wants you to know that you’re seeing a trick. He’ll dazzle you and leave you dumbfounded, but he won’t ever insult your intelligence, steal from you or tell you that he’s touched with the supernatural. He’s the most rational man to ever have himself hung upside down in a straitjacket over Niagara Falls.
In his mid-50s, Randi lost his passion for putting on a show, but lost none of his energy. From there, he simply channeled it into exposing the creeps who fleece the gullible and hinder rational thought by perpetuating primitive myths. Randi’s targets were faith healers, those sweaty showmen who claim to be conduits for God’s mercy in packed arenas, “curing” the sick, “healing” the infirm, convincing the ill to forgo medicine and trust his lying ass as they hemorrhage tax-free donation money. He also went after Uri Gellar, the spoon-bender extraordinaire who devoted his talents to feeding a messiah complex.
This documentary finds Randi in his 80s, with a wild white beard, walking with a cane and looking so tiny that he seems like you could stuff him in a travel bag, but still a fireball when he speaks, never afraid of a camera, a man used to addressing an audience. He’s also freshly outed himself as gay and happily living for about thirty years now with much-younger artist Jose Alvarez. There’s some MAJOR drama (I won’t spoil it) in that relationship though, which makes up the third act of this story. It humanizes the fireball. On first thought, it derails the film. On second thought, it’s real. It happened. Without it this film might deify its subject, which won’t do in a movie that rails against such.
It results in a truly vulnerable, wounded and honest James Randi.
And that’s a fuckload more than you’ll ever get from Uri Gellar, also interviewed here and babbling like a phony baloney.