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Magic
You should know me, I’ve always been in your mind
1978
Review: June 9, 2006
Director: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, Ed Lauter
Always nice, but not really necessary
THE SETUP:
Guy has two personalities, and acts one of them out through his ventriloquist’s dummy.
DISCUSSION:
This is another of those movies I saw on TV back in the day and thought it was SO mysterious and hard-hitting. I have been curious to revisit it ever since, but it’s kind of hard to find on DVD. So when I saw a Chinese DVD of it for $4.99, I snapped that shit up.
The copy on the back of the Chinese DVD lays out the story: “He is a poor magician. Being chicken-hearted, he can’t perform to the best he can. However, he turns a new leaf when he performs with his dummy by belly language. They become a matching pair welcomed by audience. Unknown to all, there is a secret at the backstage. The ventriloquist obsessed by his dummy is impelled to murder…”
So we begin with Anthony Hopkins bombing during his magic show at amateur night, intercut with him telling his ailing mentor that he knocked everyone dead. Then we cut to about a year later, when he is the star attraction and has apparently been a huge draw at the same venue for 28 weeks.
He introduces Fats, this ventriloquist dummy that looks creepily like Hopkins. Burgess Meredith is on hand as Hopkins’ manager, who is negotiating to make him a bigger star. Things go wrong early when Hopkins refuses to take a medical test. Okay, so we know he’s crazy, but how would this necessarily show up in a medical test? But anyway, he runs away to go upstate and ends up rooming with Ann-Margret, whom he had a crush on all through high school. Apparently she was a little bit of a fan as well. She, mysteriously, finds Fats the dummy just SO adorable and not at all creepy. They fall in love and fall into bed. Ann’s husband, Duke, is kind of permanently away on business.
So soon Hopkins in carrying on long private conversations with the dummy. Then Burgess Meredeth shows up, and sees that Hopkins is nuts. He asks him to go five minutes without Fats talking [even without belly language?], which is one of the scenes I totally remember from being 14 or whatever. Anyway, we then start spiraling into a world of murder and body-disposal and suspicion and suspense.
It’s okay, but it never quite really zings. Since we don’t see the adoption and beginning of Hopkin’s ‘relationship’ with Fats, we don’t know how he started or where he came from. I assume he’s been around for less than a year, since there was no mention of him when Hopkins is with his mentor, but then how did this psychosis begin so quickly and become so focused? We are also a little in the dark as to WHY his craziness took this form—is it because his mentor died? Hell if I know. And then there’s the fact that most women I know find dummies creepy and magic tricks tedious, and aren’t giggling and squealing in delight the way Margret does at every opportunity here. The net effect is to make her seem a little naïve and DESPERATE, which I’m not sure is what they intended. And then some of the unanswered questions or skewed elements keep showing up, and one becomes more and more distant from the film.
One thing that only happens once [as far as I noticed] is Fats moving by himself, which was good, as it keeps the story out of the supernatural and focused on Hopkins’ psychosis. But the movie does make it seem as though Fats is truly alive, and upon review it might have been more successful if it had strived to make him just an object and really keep the focus on Hopkins.
Everyone performs well, Burgess Meredith was unexpectedly good and Margret is a nice presence. Hopkins, of course, is good and creepy. Apparently he did the voice of Fats. But ultimately one’s left with a kind of ‘huh, that was okay,” once it’s all over, not the mind-blower that I think they were going for [or that I remember]. Oh well.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
You can. It’s not bad, it’s just not that great.
