Awful

Rating: 1/10 (18 September 2006)

I watched this movie tonight and I have nothing but legitimate concern for the 70% of people who voted this movie better than an 8. It was awful. Absolutely terrible. Don't go see it, nothing is explained, its just "uni"-faceted writing with absolutely no evident substance. Despite the incredible misuse of the iris shot this movie constantly uses to give it the feeling of a solid period piece, and the horrid camera usage and editing, what this movie lacks that never made up for those gross errors, is character development, feasible story line, historical relevance, and most of all a convincing script. Why is it in Vienna? Why do they all have crappy British accents? Why does none of the magic make sense? All legitimate questions that should be considered before this is voted a "10". There are scenes that are laughable solely because of the constant use of generic plot summary and convoluted dialog ("Oh I loved you and now we're finally together" "But do you really want to give up everything and be with me?" "Yes" "okay") And worst of all none of it makes sense. It's not some sort of intelligent whodunit film where you're perpetually pondering what happened, it's a movie that is obvious in its exploits and drags through the development to get to the stupid point. If something didn't make sense or lacked cogency there was an allusion to the fact that Eisenhiem was simply a magician and thats what they do. I mean a machine that makes an orange plant that grows oranges? Transparent people that can look directly at others but do not exist in the public beyond the show? This movie seemed to flaunt it flaws simply because it was confident that the audience would somehow be subdued by the premise of a magician in a mystical period of time. And another thing missing: dialog. there are like 50 sentences outside narration in the entire movie. Thats called a crutch people and its what separates movies from bedtime stories. Boo this movie and the ignorant complacent people that somehow found it "illusive" and engaging. And if Eisenhiem really could do all that incredible stuff why didn't he create an illusion and kill the prince with one of his phantom children that have voices and talk and movement, that makes more sense than setting him up to kill himself after the poison in the drink he likes to frequent causes him to conveniently pass out outside the view of the one guard protecting the Prince of the biggest empire in Europe. This movie sucked major balls, and just because its the end of the summer and most of the movies are crap anyway this was one of the few I almost have walked out on in my life. Basic summary: Guy loves girl, guy isn't allowed to love girl, guy leaves gets powers that are never explained, guy comes back and gets girl, guy goes on tangent to screw over a petty one dimensional prick, guy gets away, all the while some police inspector that is blatantly established in modern law and ethics has a moral reformation for some reason. The Pretige is going to blow this movie out of the water and we'll all wonder what the hell movies like this and Magnolia are doing in the top thousand films on IMDb.,