Greatest Magic

The cover of this slickly packaged tape advertises itself as Greatest Magic and features a glossy of a buxom assistant emerging from a giant black hat, but once you pop it into the VCR, the first sleight of hand materializes, and the trick's on you. Presto! The actual tape inside the slipcase is called South Florida's Greatest Magic 1997, an amateur video of a talent show performed in front of what looks like a half empty theater of bored junior high school students. Using Enigma and Kenny G music (most likely illegally), and trying desperately for some kind of Las Vegas glam, the semi-professional magicians on this tape perform a cumbersome series of slow developing tricks almost all of which involve those flimsy and questionable double sided boxes, tin swords and smoky mirrors that we've seen 1,000 times before (500 times on this very tape). Amateurish mistakes abound, from camera angles which give away the tricks to jarring and disconcerting jump cuts in the middle of magic acts, which led me to the conclusion that the magician must have blown the trick and started again or that there were actually two performances edited into one. After 120 minutes of this marathon, my kids were begging to be taken to the dentist, and believe me, this deceptive aberration made a fast disappearing act into my recycle bin. Not recommended. Aud: P. (R. Ray)