!!!! SPOILERS !!!!! Yeah I know it's a documentary but I'm taking no chances
James Randi ? One of the first names I discovered via getting connected to the internet . I know over 3.600 IMDb comments beg to differ but when I first had an internet account in Febuary 2001 my favourite sites were the skeptics ones exposing and demolishing everything to do with faith healing , para-psychology and other nonsense . One name that constantly kept cropping up , almost on a par with being a secular God of the skeptical movement , was James Randi , a Canadian born sceptic who started out as a magician and who later became an exposer of frauds , hoaxes and other naughty rip off merchants . This documentary tells of his life , his great successes and his present life which despite all his fame involves something of a personal tragedy of sorts
The documentary works best when it concentrates on Randi exposing cheats and how gullible the public are when it comes to being cheated . Anyone remember The Carlos Hoax ? I'm too young too remember but archive footage shows Randi taking a young South American called Jose Alvarez who claimed to channel spirits of the dead to Australia , making up easily checkable fake resumes and getting "Carlos" on every Australian news and documentary show Carlos strutted his stuff with the dead . He could have been a household name today but it was up Randi and Alvarez themselves to stick their hand up and state it was all an act and was done merely to show how lazy , incompetent and downright useless journalists can be when checking facts . Then we get the famous exposure of evangelical faith healer Peter Popoff whose direct contact with God was down to the much less miraculous miracle of wearing an earpiece and getting his wife to give names and ailments of people in the congregation . Randi's (in)famous and long running feud is also covered along with a few now forgotten self promoting self proclaimed mystics
Now one thing you can't really accuse Randi of is being lovable . From what I've seen of him he's short tempered , doesn't suffer fools and takes no prisoners . This isn't a criticism and if DOCTOR WHO was an American show Randi would have been born to play the anti-heroic cantankerous incarnation of the first Doctor . Don't believe for a second that this is a sycophantic glowing love letter to James Randi and the clue is in the title - AN HONEST LIAR . As it turns out Randi is a homosexual which he revealed late in life . Again not a criticism . And he partnered up to Jose "Carlos" Alvarez many years ago . Again not a criticism . But as it turns out Alvarez isn't who he claims to be and is one Deyvi Pena who entered America on a false passport , Cue a fair amount of unspoken innuendo that the man who exposed so many con artists has become a victim of sorts to a con artist . I thought this aspect of the documentary which has a feel of undisguised schadenfreude was rather unfair and just a little bit cruel towards Randi and ends an often fascinating documentary on a downbeat , negative vote
James Randi ? One of the first names I discovered via getting connected to the internet . I know over 3.600 IMDb comments beg to differ but when I first had an internet account in Febuary 2001 my favourite sites were the skeptics ones exposing and demolishing everything to do with faith healing , para-psychology and other nonsense . One name that constantly kept cropping up , almost on a par with being a secular God of the skeptical movement , was James Randi , a Canadian born sceptic who started out as a magician and who later became an exposer of frauds , hoaxes and other naughty rip off merchants . This documentary tells of his life , his great successes and his present life which despite all his fame involves something of a personal tragedy of sorts
The documentary works best when it concentrates on Randi exposing cheats and how gullible the public are when it comes to being cheated . Anyone remember The Carlos Hoax ? I'm too young too remember but archive footage shows Randi taking a young South American called Jose Alvarez who claimed to channel spirits of the dead to Australia , making up easily checkable fake resumes and getting "Carlos" on every Australian news and documentary show Carlos strutted his stuff with the dead . He could have been a household name today but it was up Randi and Alvarez themselves to stick their hand up and state it was all an act and was done merely to show how lazy , incompetent and downright useless journalists can be when checking facts . Then we get the famous exposure of evangelical faith healer Peter Popoff whose direct contact with God was down to the much less miraculous miracle of wearing an earpiece and getting his wife to give names and ailments of people in the congregation . Randi's (in)famous and long running feud is also covered along with a few now forgotten self promoting self proclaimed mystics
Now one thing you can't really accuse Randi of is being lovable . From what I've seen of him he's short tempered , doesn't suffer fools and takes no prisoners . This isn't a criticism and if DOCTOR WHO was an American show Randi would have been born to play the anti-heroic cantankerous incarnation of the first Doctor . Don't believe for a second that this is a sycophantic glowing love letter to James Randi and the clue is in the title - AN HONEST LIAR . As it turns out Randi is a homosexual which he revealed late in life . Again not a criticism . And he partnered up to Jose "Carlos" Alvarez many years ago . Again not a criticism . But as it turns out Alvarez isn't who he claims to be and is one Deyvi Pena who entered America on a false passport , Cue a fair amount of unspoken innuendo that the man who exposed so many con artists has become a victim of sorts to a con artist . I thought this aspect of the documentary which has a feel of undisguised schadenfreude was rather unfair and just a little bit cruel towards Randi and ends an often fascinating documentary on a downbeat , negative vote