James Randi
“AN HONEST LIAR” My rating: B
90 minutes | No MPAA rating
James Randi has nothing against lying — at least under the right circumstances.
“It’s OK to fool people,” he says, “if it’s to teach them a lesson in how the world works.”
Under the name of The Amazing Randi, this 86-year-old stage magician (born Randall Zwinge) has devoted most of his life to debunking claims about the paranormal. Randi doesn’t say that faith healing, ESP and telekinesis do not exist. That sort of certainty is reserved for the true believers.
What he does claim — and he’s proven it in instance after instance — is that he can use his knowledge of stage magic to detect the deceptions practiced by metaphysical snake oil salesmen eager to exploit the gullibility of their fellow humans.
A magician is honest, Randi maintains, because he tells you that he’s going to fool you — and then he fools you. And you love it.
“An Honest Liar,” Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom’s documentary about Randi and his long crusade for scientific and critical thinking, is both gleeful good fun (it’s satisfying to see charlatans exposed) and touching as the tale of a man who on occasion has practiced his own deceptions.
While still a teen the magic-obsessed Zwinge ran away from his Toronto home and literally joined the circus. Over time he developed a stage act as The Amazing Randi. His strongest suit was as an escape artist — some experts claimed he surpassed Harry Houdini (the documentary opens with a real-time TV broadcast from the ’50s of Randi being hung upside down in a straightjacket and wriggling his way out).
In the ’70s and ’80s Randi became known as a debunker. He took on professed miracle workers like the spoon-bending Uri Geller and the faith-healing evangelist Peter Popoff (who was able to “diagnose” the health problems of total strangers thanks to an earpiece through which his wife read details off the information cards attendees filled out before each “service”).
“A man who heals the deaf doesn’t need a hearing aid,” Randi observes.
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