Disappointment, Part 1

I saw three movies in the past seven days and came away frustrated from all of them. Therefore, the next set of reviews, over the next few days, will focus on that trio: Changeling, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Death Defying Acts. This critique is about the last one.

I couldn't understand how a movie starring A-lister and Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta Jones, well-liked Aussie star Guy Pearce and rising newcomer Saoirse Ronan could receive no publicity and slip in and out of a New York City theater in just one week this summer. The plot sounded really interesting, and The Illusionist and The Prestige two years earlier indicated a market exists for magician films.

It took me two days to get through a 1-hour-and-40-minute movie. That should tell me something.

Death Defying Acts fails to cast a spell, despite its acclaimed pedigree and intriguing setup. In 1926, Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) offers $10,000 to anyone who can channel his mother’s last words. Enter (fictional) Scottish con woman Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta Jones), who claims psychic powers, and her ragamuffin daughter (Saoirse Ronan). Director Gillian Armstrong unsuccessfully balances mystery and romance and hampers herself with a dull pace. Woeful miscasting of the leads - she’s too glam, he’s inappropriately Noo Yawk brash - only magnifies the movie’s flaws and makes one yearn for a more enchanting magic film, 2006’s The Illusionist.