The Prestige versus The Illusionist

Okay, we viewed both of these films over the weekend. I know that Todd was an advocate of The Prestige over The Illusionist and I am not sure that I agree with that. Let me start by saying that The Prestige was a great movie. It looked amazing and it was a well acted period piece. I especially enjoyed the volleys of evil between Batman and Wolverine in their attempts to show each other up. I noticed that quite a few of the “twists” were telegraphed well before hand, and this very well could have been on purpose. The thing that ruined The Prestige for me was simple plausibility, meaning that the amount of disbelief that I was supposed to suspend was too great for me to enjoy the movie. I could accept that there were 2 wolverines, almost identical, that had never met before. I could almost accept that Doc Bowie built an inadvertent cloning machine (which produced the best image of the film, when at the end you see the countless water tanks containing drowned clones in the basement of the old theater). The line was crossed for me when they paraded the second “twin” batman out and explain everything away with this other batman, whose only purpose in life is supposedly to fulfill batman 1’s every selfish whim (BM2 has his fingers cut off and eventually hangs, all so BM1 can do a magic trick? Ludicrous!). I tried to rationalize this by imagining that batman had visited Doc Bowie and while not purchasing an electricity machine, had received a complimentary clone during a test run. This was not disclosed in the movie so I am assuming that they were supposed to be the batman brothers. These notions are just too cartoonish for such a serious film.

On a side note, I get the sneaking suspicion that Todd likes the band “Arcade Fire”.

Overall I felt that The Illusionist was a much better film because the acting was superb and the story was timeless. Even though it included more love than is normally my taste, it was the angst of never having that love and then the feeling of loss from immediately losing it that made it a bearable display of emotion for me. Norton was amazing in this movie, but I felt that Giamatti stole the show with his performance. The twists in this movie were telegraphed as well (or maybe I am just too smart for my own good, which is doubtful), but there were still some very well thought out puzzles that kept you guessing until the end. The prince was a little bit overboard but that is forgivable.. Overall I felt that The Illusionist did more with less substance in comparison to The Prestige, which had more of a story to tell but chose to lay it out “Momento style” which was distracting.

Overall I give The Prestige 2 fingers blown off with a rigged stunt pistol and I give The Illusionist 2 oranges from a mechanical orange tree. Magnificent!