an insult to the intellect

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2008)

Great sets, good actors, a reasonable story, but spoiled by Hollywood once again low-balling the viewers IQ.
To resolve the competition between two magicians, the story introduces a scientist who creates for one of the magicians a device capable of duplicating whatever is put into it.
Having acquired this duplicating device, the magician then uses it to create copies of himself, which he drowns as part of his magic act. This act of repeated self-murder allows him to successfully compete with his rival, although we only discover the mechanism behind the successful magic act at the very end of the film.
Surely the act of creating a copy of yourself only to ask him to commit suicide as a means of furthering ones competitive goals deserves a better treatment than that given in this film.
There's a story here far more interesting than the one presented.