Magic "tricks"

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2006)

I found it jarring that the movie kept using the term "trick," as in "The greatest magic trick I've ever seen." If you see the trick, it's not good magic. This is particularly annoying since the introduction (included in the previews) purports to give you a lesson in magicians' terminology, (the Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige) and then goes on to use grade-school argot. A magic trick is something you buy at Jack's Joke Shop. Magicians don't "do tricks", they perform, and the performance involves a series of effects or illusions, not a bunch of tricks. An effect may involve one or more tricks (slights, gimmicks, etc.) and it's proper to refer to them as such, but to confuse the effect and the trick is a vulgar error. You don't display tricks, but there may be a trick to what you do. The effect isn't a secret, since that's what people see. The trick IS a secret. Professionals at the turn of the century were pretty huffy about this.