Just watched this movie – well put together. I remember when Uri Geller was the toast of the town as they say, as well as the Amazing Randi going after him trying to prove that everything Uri did with his psychic powers, Randi could do through a magician’s deceptive abilities. It was his way to try and prove that ESP does not really exist because he could do the same things through simple magician’s tricks. The only trick that is actually explained is a very transparent one that involves a hustling Christian preacher who got back into the ‘healing’ business very quickly. Wow, I could do that one a lot better. At no time did the movie explain how any of the ‘magical’ make believe spoon bending, or spinning of wheels under a glass dome were done. And yet we’re supposed to believe that the Amazing Randi and all of his associates are telling the truth while Uri Geller and any other so-called psychics are frauds and liars.
So, both sides are explaining the underlying how of things, but neither of them is willing to teach us how they’re done. Hey, I’m an agnostic – I might possibly believe one side or the other if they gave a me a step by step guide that I could follow at home in order to achieve the same result. After all that is what science is – telling someone that something just is so, without giving them a way to duplicate the experiment, is just hearsay Randi.
It is interesting that the movie’s main focus is slowly shifting from the major controversy of magic versus ESP to his personal love life and its previously hidden difficulties. So instead of proving his point, Randi manages to make me feel like he is trying to hide some greater truth. Makes me wonder, if ESP does exist what could possibly be the real reason that so many are trying to hide it from me. By the way, the basic philosophy of the scientific method is in a nutshell, the ability to measure natural phenomena and get the same results every time. So in Uri Geller’s case, if he failed once, but succeeded many other times – he may be a psychic but he cannot possibly prove it scientifically. And that makes think too! Randi and his crew managed to ‘disqualify’ Geller quite a few times. And yet he gave his consent and some of his time to be interviewed for this movie. He is also not calling himself a psychic anymore. It’s like there is a conspiracy to hide the actual truth and he was just let in on the secret.
I could have gone on for a while, but I should probably just say that I enjoyed the ideas that this movie birthed in my mind, so yes – good!