User Reviews

...but highly watchable nonetheless. 'Houdini' is nothing we haven't seen before. This is so formulaic that really without much rewriting this film could be about anyone. This script is dead awful in terms of creating a story about the life of a real human being. This is the kind of picture 'Dewey Cox' lampooned so brutally.

But really I sort of expected this going into 'Houdini'. Bio pics really are a dime a dozen. None of them are particularly imaginative in framing the stories of their subjects. It's all about the presentation and the lead actor. In these regards 'Houdini' is a very fortunate movie. It's well shot, staged. and is very imaginative. Above anything else though Adrien Brody is the savior of this film. I think had a lesser actor been cast this movie could have been a disaster. This is a performance that transcends the clichés.

One of the glaring problems 'Houdini' and most bio pics has is that they want their titular characters to dissect life in a way that no real human ever does. Harry Houdini was a brilliant magician but that was also his job. If 'Houdini' wanted to dissect life through the lens of it's character it would devote more time to showing Houdini developing his performances and exploring his relationship with the audience. I really fail to see why this isn't more simple to comprehend. So the least interesting aspects of the film all have to do with the comical monologues Brody is given as he explains his deepest darkest fears. Frankly, they make Houdini sound pretentious and whiny. Brody does his best with them but they hurt both the pacing of the film and the audience's relationship with the character.

Unsurprisingly 'Houdini' works brilliantly when it goes into his magic acts. Brody exhibits a great starry eyed quality into his character. There's a great moment in the film when Harry talks about striving to give his audience the best and how that serves as a constant challenge to one up himself. Everything is recreated in a painstaking manner and Brody actually does a great job setting up these tricks. He is brilliant at making us interested.

The second half which delves into his quest to debunk spiritualists is even better than the first half. It really leaves the traps of the script here and we see Houdini as a real character. Frankly, I think this is what I admired most about Houdini. Brody shows Houdini as a man in grief who wants nothing more than to be wrong and to believe in a world of the fantastic despite knowing the secrets behind every magic trick. I think a great film could just be made with this aspect of Houdini's life because it shows Houdini for what he was best at, bending secrets. The fact that he bends secrets because he cares about people though is what makes him identifiable.

'Houdini' is goofy but really in the scope of things it is harmless and Adrien Brody is able to do some good things with the role. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in Harry Houdini and wants a somewhat fresh looking take. It's not terrible but serviceable. At the very most Adrien Brody wants to have fun even if it is ridiculous and Harry Houdini is remembered because of his ability to bring fun to the audiences.

Directed by Uli Edel (Body of Evidence, The Little Vampire), I spotted this two-part miniseries advertised and became most interested both because of the story of the famous man of the title and the leading actor playing him. Basically this television made film tells the life story of legendary and world famous Hungarian-American illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody), looking behind all the magic tricks and traps to getaway from that brought him fame and fortune. This includes his childhood living in poverty, his early beginnings doing magic tricks on the street and in the circus, meeting and marrying his beloved Bess Houdini (The Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly), meeting and partnering with Jim Collins (Jarhead's Evan Jones) who became his stage assistant. The legendary escape challenges for Harry featured include from a jail cell, the Chinese water torture cell, the suspended straitjacket escape, chained up and jumping into icy water from a bridge and escaping from a locked bank vault style safe, it also shows Harry using his kills to engage in espionage missions for the government, working for head of MI5 William Melville (Tim Pigott-Smith). Through the years he encounters great names of the era, including Sherlock Holmes creator and spiritualist believer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The World Is Not Enough's David Calder), Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, mystical adviser Grigori Rasputin and Presidents of the United States. Following the death of his mother, Cecilia Weiss (Eszter Ónodi), he seeks to confront, battle with and expose fraudulent spiritualists, but ultimately he returns to his magic routes until mortal pains occur, most likely caused by many punches in the stomach that he took and blocked out the pain, in the end Harry Houdini died at age 52 of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix. Also starring Tom Benedict Knight as Dash Houdini, Shaun Williamson as Riley, Linda Marlowe as Lady Doyle and Louis Mertens as Erich Weiss. Brody is a very good choice as the leading man, Connolly is also well cast as his both loving and long concerned wife, the style of editing and use of special effects makes for great trick and escape sequences, you are gripped into finding out whether he will do it or not, and how, and the personal character story throughout is interesting to watch as well, all in all it was a well thought out and interesting drama. Very good!

HOUDINI, The latest biopic from History Channel is engaging, insightful, and filled with commendable acting (how could it not be with Oscar Winner Brody at the helm?) However, the attempt to update a centuries-old story with trendy quick cuts, and CSI/NCIS/SVU-like sound effects is just plain annoying, and may make you want this mini-series' to disappear forever.

Adrien Brody turns in a fine performance as the famed magician, playing him as a complicated figure, as charming with audiences as he is jealous, and egotistical behind the curtain. You know... human.

Kristen Connolly is great as Bess Houdini, illustrating how frustrating it must have been to always be in the wings, both on stage and around Houdini's ever-present mother. However, I'd have liked to see more of the suffragette struggle since Bess' inequality personified what the 19th Amendment, THE hot topic at the time, was all about in the first place.

The many "how'd they do that?" trick reveals were entertaining, if not a buzz kill. And while they may take the pizazz out of magic as we know it, they also serve to show Houdini as a clever man willing to push his body to the limit for entertainment value.

Leave it to History Channel for blowing the lid off of myths that have surrounded Houdini's story for years. Previous biopics have played with the facts far too long for dramatic effect.

HOUDINI is entertaining enough, and the two night length was just right. Sadly, the production effects and other digital wizardry will date this mini-series long before the Great Houdini's legend escapes our cultural legacy.

I'm a big fan of Houdini; he ranks up there as one of the top historical figures to fascinate the present. The multiple layers of his life and the different translations of it from his public side to his private side have become fuel for some very interesting depictions from the 1953 depiction, "Houdini," to "The Great Houdini" with Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers in 1976, the one that ranks as my favorite. However, after Jonathan Schaech's 2008 version, one might start to wonder what might be left to dramatize. Well, there is the rumor that Houdini might have been drafted to work as a spy for British Intelligence, a claim that has never been proved. With this depicted in the film, one might start to wonder what else did they get wrong? "Houdini" still manages to adhere to the basic time-line of Houdini's life and career, but it also seems to bend things here and there to create drama and to rush into the famous moments of his life we all want to see brought to life on the small screen. From his simple life working for carnivals to his later successes, the movie actually condenses the one thing that Houdini was actually best known for than his magic: his war on phony Spiritualists and then going much further than that by establishing his motives. Could Houdini have actually believed in an Afterlife so much that he outed all the charlatans he encountered trying to find a one-true psychic in touch with the spirit world. It's a very novel interpretation that I've never seen posed before, but it also makes sense when you keep it in mind to re-watch the other Houdini movies. However, where it starts becoming unbelievable are in depicting Houdini's possible spy career and more fiction with Houdini entertaining the Russian Royal Family and meeting Rasputin before the revolution, events I've learned which never happened. It does stay essentially truthful to his death in the hospital rather than the stage legend that has been forced down our throats. (Thank you, Tony Curtis.) Nevertheless, the movie does not fail to entertain or keep our attention. Despite being thinner and more gaunt than Houdini, Adrien Brody enjoys himself in the role and gives an excellent performance, as does Kristen Connolly who is woefully underused at times as a fiery and strong-willed Bess. The highlights are the explanations behind some of Houdini's lesser-known illusions. I enjoyed the movie, and unless you're a massive Houdini purist for accuracy, this one should appeal to you as well.

I was a bit shocked when I watched this film and found out that Houdini had other women. I googled the phrase, "did Houdini cheat on his wife?" and got this website: www.wildabouthoudini.com. I found out that other books had been written about him that tells about the other women. I had heard on a PBS special about him that he had an affair with Jack London's wife. He felt so guilty about it that he never did it again.

Some of the books that have been written make no mention of them, but tell only of his career and his relationship with Bess.

Here are some goofs that I found in the story:

Houdini's mother died in 1913, not 1914 When Lady Doyle could not contact his mother, he did not rant, rave, and call her a fake. He wrote the name "Powell" on a piece of paper, saying that it was this man's mother that she had reached.

The punch in the stomach did not kill him. Some sources say that he was very cavalier about his health and had bouts of appendicitis off and on. He may have already been suffering when the blows were struck.

The plunge into icy water, and walking through the wall are apocryphal. You can just bet that if they *did* happen, Harry would have them well documented.

It is a shame, though, that more about his movie career was not mentioned. There is a collection of his movies called, Harry Houdini: Movie Star. Terror Island, Man From Beyond, and The Grim Game are included, but Grim Game is just a few clips, because a full film could not be found. Extras include clips of Houdini's voice, which can also be heard on the website, Houdiniana.

It is a shame that collectors of Houdini's movies will not share them with the public. It has been said that David Copperfield owns a few of them.

Like many fans of Harry Houdini, I wanted to view this with an open mind. To my dismay, "Houdini" follows the pattern set by the previous string of disappointing Houdini biopics, the most major sin being that invented situations are favored in place of actual fact. With a screenplay based on a 1976 book that sought to psychoanalyze the great magician rather than tell his story, this film is perhaps the most disrespectful and historically inaccurate attempt yet, and is not only an insult to Houdini himself, but also to anyone who knows anything about his life.

While the screenplay leaves much to be desired, filled with more fiction than fact and inanely on-the-nose dialogue that never even tries to capture the cadence of the time-period, this could have been a fairly good film, if not for the filmmakers' preoccupation with giving every scene some psychological double-meaning. To this end, there is an overabundance of frankly weird and slightly trippy effects: fast, jerky cuts, an intrusive voice-over that dominates the first half of the story, and a melodramatic, oft-repeated gut-punch every time something traumatic happens to Houdini that, through the help of CGI, goes so far as to show the muscles and organs themselves. John Debney's electronic-heavy and unsettling score also adds to this slightly nightmarish atmosphere.

As entertainment, "Houdini" might appeal to some, but overall, it is simply too much of a fantasy to qualify as a true biopic. The most interesting, important, or character-building events of Houdini's life and career are changed, shifted around in time, or thrown out altogether in favor of giving precedence to completely invented scenes and situations. While every screenwriter has the right to invent, the problem you are bound to encounter when you start rewriting history is that eventually people start believing it. No doubt this film will only add to the already long list of Hollywood-created misconceptions about Houdini. Oddly enough, although this is the first film to depict his death accurately (from appendicitis, not drowning in the Water Torture Cell), they pander to this myth by including a scene showing Houdini nearly drowning while practicing and having to be axed out, with the afore-mentioned gut-punches acting as a remarkably unsubtle bit of foreshadowing.

With a script that doesn't try very hard to be true to actual fact, it should come as no surprise that this holds with the characters as well. With almost no time for character development or even insight into their motivations, it is hard for them to emerge as much more than window-dressing. The final scene between Houdini and his wife should be moving, but because no time was spent building their relationship and personalities, it doesn't have the impact that it should.

Adrien Brody might be a good actor in other roles, but as the great illusionist he is something of a mismatch. With his lean face and puppy-dog expressions, it's hard to equate him with the slight, smiling showman that Houdini really was. His nasally Brooklyn accent makes him sound more like a member of the mob than a Hungarian-born kid who spent his formative years in Wisconsin and New York, and his sleepy, brooding demeanor doesn't gel with Houdini's legendary passion, charisma, and almost hyper-active energy. Most of the fault is, again, due to the script, which takes great liberties with Houdini's personality, leaving how Brody's Houdini managed to achieve the success he did as the greatest mystery of all.

Kristen Connolly as Houdini's wife Bess is the closest match physically to the real Bess we've seen on film (again disregarding the height discrepancy), but her performance also leaves much to be desired, once again a consequence of the abysmal script. Most of the problem is that you don't see her enough. When you do, she comes off as a nagging, unsupportive, and slightly dim-witted woman who doesn't seem to love him very much, which leaves what ought to be the major emotional thread of the film hanging.

Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer's preoccupation with giving Houdini a complex on everything is most flagrantly apparent in the exaggeration of his relationship with his mother, Cecilia Weiss. Suffice to say, you couldn't get much more Freudian with it, and the scenes that result are, in a word, disturbing. This, predictably, creates tension in his relationship with his wife, Bess, who resents her mother-in-law with emotions verging on hatred. If he had cared to do a little more research on 20th century culture and Houdini himself, he might have better understood that while he was deeply devoted to her, in that period, being a "mama's boy" was expected and could exist without Oedipal undertones, and that she and Bess were not mortal enemies.

But the unkindest cut of all is the filmmakers' decision to do a lurid expose in vivid CGI of all of Houdini's escapes. Besides being in poor taste, it also effectively breaks the code of any magician's society, and amounts to something near sacrilege. While most devoted Houdini fans have a rudimentary idea of how he effected them, do we really want to know? These intermittent forays break up the flow of the story and strips the film of any magic or wonder it might have had, the only exception being the Vanishing Elephant which is, thankfully, not explained.

What disappoints the most is that despite all the reverence and admiration still felt for the master mystifier almost 90 years after his death, no one seems to be able to bring themselves to make a decent film about him. If you don't know a thing about Houdini, this film isn't going to help you, as most of it is complete poppycock. If you do know something about him, don't sport with your intelligence by watching it. Just pick up a book, or watch Harvey Keitel's amazing performance as Houdini in "Fairytale" (1997).

It is a travesty that this production is from "The History Channel"- there's more factual content in stories front The Onion. There's more fantasy in this production than in Houdini's own self-made mythology... And he was the king of self-promotion, creating a much better fictional background than creators of this junk food television. I shudder to think of the people who are "learning" history from this network... When the Tony Curtis movie came out in the 50's, America "learned" how Houdini died performing the Chinese Water Torture Escape- an illusion not even on the bill the night he received the blows to his stomach that ultimately proved fatal. He died in the hospital a week after his final performance of peritonitis, brought on my a ruptured appendix. And, yet, that is now part of popular culture. But at least that one was a theatrical release. This masquerades as fact, and that's disturbing. The fact that is so poorly written just exacerbates the problem. I feel bad for Adrien Brody's participation; he's much too fine an actor to be associated with this sad piece of theater.

Since the commercials have been showing on History channel, I've been excited for Houdini Part 1 of 2 to come on. Well, tonight I finally watched it. I thought it was very interesting and kept me entertained. But, in my opinion it could have used some more action and more interesting"escape plans". Other than that, I thought the show was awesome and I can't wait to see part 2. Hopefully, many more seasons to come! I also am so freaking thrilled by the ending of part 1. Come on part 2.....!!!!! Houdini's wife Bess, I thought she did a wonderful job in part 1. At the beginning I didn't like her at all. But now, she seems to me less caring about everything and for some reason I love it!

This was an enjoyable TV miniseries. The film follows Houdini (Adrien Brody) from childhood fascination with magic and the support he got from his loving mother. He marries Bess (Kristen Connolly) which was a less than idea marriage. The film shows you how Houdini did his tricks...except for maybe that one thing.

Houdini was like Madonna, in that he was constantly trying to re-invent himself in order to stay on top. We would see where his ideas would come from, which most likely were dramatizations. The film touches on his infidelity and goes into detail on his mission as a spy and as a debunk-er of Mediums.

Adrien Brody looked extremely buff for the part.

No F-bombs or nudity. Brief sex scenes. One scene takes place in a brothel.