There are at least a dozen great movies to be made out of the life of
Harry Houdini, the magician/escapist/pre-cinematic showman/enemy of
spiritualism. Unfortunately, History’s new Houdini tries to be
all those movies and a few more. The result is a grab-bag of biopic
clichés, awkwardly strung together by star Adrien Brody’s narration.
Brody sounds like he’s auditioning for any of the parts in Sin City 3, and he overcooks every half-baked line into pure cheesecake: “The one thing I can’t seem to escape from… is me.”
Or: “Some things can hit you in the gut worse than any punch.” Or, I
kid you not, about three minutes later: “The only thing more devastating
than a punch to the gut… is an arrow through the heart.”The first hour of Houdini isn’t unwatchable, but it’s close. As Houdini’s long-suffering wife, Kristen Connolly (Cabin in the Woods‘ Final Girl) puts her wildly expressive face in service of skimpy material, overdelivering on every bemused/gleeful/grumpy reaction shot. (In the movie’s telling, Mrs. Houdini’s life was a series of reaction shots.) Just look at her before-and-after a young Houdini flirts with her using magic tricks:
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