Call Me Miss Cleo (2022) User Reviews

Outlook Not So Good

[JuniorAndTwinsFanForLife · 5/10 · 16 January 2023]

I'm what you would call a Miss Cleo superfan. Back in grade school my friends and I used to regularly participate in all the juiciest Miss Cleo playground rumors and gossip. We also used to quote Miss Cleo's commercials all the time with our best (worst) Jamaican accents.

My friend Cory was the only one in our group brave enough to actually call Miss Cleo. He told us he got spooked and hung up because some strange man answered the phone. A few weeks later Cory told us all he made a huge mistake and his parents blew a gasket because the Miss Cleo autodialer was calling their house in full force.

So as you might guess by now, as a Miss Cleo superfan, I became absolutely elated when I first learned about the "Call Me Miss Cleo" documentary. First I had to prepare myself. I took inventory of all my otherworldly possessions: my shaman beads, voodoo doll, crystal ball, Ouija board, snake oil, rabbit's foot, and Magic 8 Ball. With my spiritual paraphernalia at the ready, I was finally set to begin "Call Me Miss Cleo".

So imagine my immeasurable disappointment with this garbage heap of a documentary. First off, most of the people interviewed are hardly even connected to Miss Cleo. Why not interview Miss Cleo's relatives or her two biological children? Why not interview any of the actual victims who felt they were scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars?

Why does the documentary contain barely any new and interesting video footage of Miss Cleo? It mostly shows her commercials that are already publicly widespread. Why not do the tiniest bit of research and include photos and videos that the general public hasn't already seen to make for a more exclusive and compelling documentary? The only neat thing the documentary uncovered is Miss Cleo's old yearbook photo, and you can tell the filmmakers were super proud of that one because they recycled it half a dozen times!

The editing is also amateur at best. There's a scene where an interviewee talks about Miss Cleo's childhood and for some reason these extraordinarily unfitting demons are shown that have no relation to anything? And why are there so many random shots of trees during transitions?

The absolute crux of the entire Miss Cleo saga is without a doubt the FTC charges against Access Resource Services and Psychic Readers Network. The victims, the lawyers, the drama -- why was this barely expanded upon? This was a landmark half BILLION dollar settlement and y'all decided to gloss over it and pad the documentary with the small and uninteresting stories nobody really cares about, whose decision was that?

Just like calling a psychic hotline, "Call Me Miss Cleo" left me with more questions than answers. This documentary had the potential to be something really entertaining and nostalgic for everyone who grew up with Miss Cleo, and instead we got a low-effort, low-budget, low-researched product. If you're wanting to learn anything about Miss Cleo, skip this documentary and just read her Wikipedia page instead. I'm rating this a 5/10 only because Miss Cleo still has a special place in my childhood heart, but I am doing so begrudgingly.

Starts off informative then falls apart

[Rage2Wrath · 4/10 · 18 December 2022]

If you were alive and aware in the 90s through the early 2000s you know who Miss Cleo is. A tv psychic that eventually was caught up in a lot of fraud charges. This documentary promised to delve in to her past let the viewer know who she really was. The problem is that it never really does that. It hints at what the truth is but never really lays it out. I assume because the movie makers don't actually know, which begs the question, why make an expose about a person you don't really know anything about? It does expose past fraud she was involved in like stealing money from a small theater group in Seattle and lying about cancer for sympathy. Then it goes on to detail how she became the face a billion dollar fraudulent psychic network that cheated countless people out of money they probably didn't have to waste on lies. The weird part is that towards the end of the documentary it seems to try and make you sympathize with her due to her activism in the gay community. I'm not saying she is Hitler but she is clearly a con artist that stole money from vulnerable people and was apparently not the least bit apologetic or willing to take responsibility for her actions. Not the kind of person someone should try to lionize in my opinion. Would have been much better if it has stuck to the premise. 4/10.

An Understanding of Her Is Not in the Cards

[jcampbell-06364 · 6/10 · 7 June 2023]

Before the widespread use of the internet, there was something called 1-900 or 1-800 connections on the telephone for "services". In the 1990's, in the multitude of late-night infomercials was the Psychic Readers Network, a group of people hired to read Tarot cards in a system that charged in the neighborhood of $5/minute. The biggest name of this group of people was Miss Cleo. I really don't know if you are not aware of who this person was that you would be interested in this documentary, but it is interesting anyway for a handful of reasons. People from Seattle were perplexed to see this woman who claimed to be a Jamaican voodoo priestess since she seemed so familiar to them. Her life in Seattle is a good basis as to how to take this person as you see this story unfold. The irony of this is that she was used by the PRN to make millions for them while some poor souls poured their hearts out to her and others in a desperate need to find answers to their problems. The Florida people who owned PRN used her identity (?) to make their money while paying her and others very little. The ending of this movie really confused me as she bravely fought her own confusions and angst to find a happy resolution to the rest of her life. The problem was for me. . .what self image was being addressed? I found the whole thing to be ironically confusing, yet I could not stop watching this.

This is barely a documentary

[tylerwoodrownichols · 3/10 · 20 December 2022]

I just watched this, and it was an alright way to pass the time, but don't expect anything great. There is no clear thesis and honestly I was expecting to find out more about her "true" identity. Most of the people who are interviewed are only tangentially connected to her, like that one woman from Madd TV or Raven-Symoné (the latter is utterly insufferable). The only compelling storylines are the theatre she defrauded in Seattle and the attorney who was involved in suing her employers. It's a shame because it seems like there really is more to the story, but you might as well just read the Wikipedia article about her. Having said that, it served its purpose as background noise while I was working on something.

She was definitely

[AlmaSoulAmor · 7/10 · 4 January 2023]

I rated this a 7 because I was engaged the entire time, but wished it had went deeper.

Throughout this documentary I had many conflicting thoughts - oh! She's a talented playwright, actress, artist . . . NO wait, she's a conwoman! Aka psychopath with anti-social personality disorder, nooo wait! . . . She has Disassociative (multiple personality) identity disorder . . . No wait??? Shrug, idk, she's for sure a fallible and dynamic human being.

I did enjoy the flow of this documentary. I liked learning about Miss Cleo's life. I do wonder how so little of her actual background could have been discovered by the documentarians. It stated that she had approximately eight adoptive siblings and adoptive parents, so how were none of them found? Although it did explain that even her birth certificate was extremely difficult to dig up.

Perhaps they should've went into how most things were not digitized back then, thus much more difficult to find. Though I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I still find it surprising that so little facts were shared about her upbringing. Why did they not interview some of her former classmates from the all girls private school? The expert on Jamaica and the African Diaspora was integral.

I really loved that her two romantic partners were interviewed near the end, as this was the highlight for me. Prop 8 was beyond reprehensible, and the fact that Miss Cleo fought for the community made me applaud her efforts.

My only gripes are - Why didn't the documentary mention what type of cancer? I shouldn't have to google this after watching. And the suicide trigger warning at the beginning made me think that she killed herself, when the only mention I recall was that she first thought of it at age 7. Lastly, what did she do for work or money during the 15 years following the lawsuits? She claimed to not have made much money from the psychic scams, so I am curious about the work she did afterwards (this being a documentary and all.)

Personally, I adored the contributions of Raven Symone to this! She was our voice, the voice of us infomercial viewers back in the day. I wouldn't have enjoyed this nearly as much without her delightful presence and commentary.

Quick and lazy documentary

[layofthelastsurvivor · 2/10 · 26 December 2022]

Parroting the other low reviews, really missed the mark. Almost no direction or attempt at trying to build any kind of interest. Just snagged the low hanging fruit.

Hard focused on some weird tangents and glazed over the interesting parts. Just hopped over the actual crime and lawsuit bits in little spurts as fast as possible.

The biggest thing is they really skipped over the people that got taken advantage of for the sake of trying to make you feel bad for her. If it was really that bad of a scam, they probably could have dug about and found at least a few victims to interview right?

We get zero of the victims perspective (besides a few tiny secondhand stories) or how they felt. If there were so many documented complaints and you spoke with prosecution post trial and settlement, you probably could have gotten at least 1 or 2 to speak. Having someone who spent a lot of money/time on the hotline and how they view it today would have been an interesting counter view.

This doc just has a very clear target audience. I'm just being honest. You might like this if your black, lgbtq, or both, but you also might feel like they hard pandered to that demographic as a way to make a lazy documentary off of a nostalgic figure.

There's for sure a super interesting story here about that industry and Cleo's personal story intermingled. It's a really interesting cultural phenomenon. Unfortunately, all this doc amounts to is a "We love Miss Cleo" party.

Plus, the editing is poo.

It's impossible to not get nostalgic watching the commercials

[kevin_robbins · 7/10 · 31 December 2022]

Call Me Miss Cleo (2022) is a documentary my wife and I watched on HBOMAX last night. The storyline follows the 1990s infomercial icon and what little information is available about her upbringing, rise up the psychic ranks, fall from grace and life through her final days.

This documentary is cocreated by Celia Aniskovich (Surviving Jeffrey Epstein) and Jennifer Brea (Unrest) and contains perspectives from celebrities Raven-Symoné (That's So Raven) and Debra Wilson (MADtv).

This series was fascinating from beginning to end. The Seattle art theatre interviews and background were insightful and her high school year book pictures were fun. It's impossible to not get nostalgic watching the commercials and hearing their background operations. However, while it was nice hearing her post life stories in interviews, it felt like they were a bunch of suckers still falling for her scams...though it made me smile that she found happiness. I do wish they were able to interview members of her immediate family or any children she may have had.

Overall, this is an entertaining documentary that leaves you wanting more. I would score this a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.

Don't Waste Your Time

[katiekat641 · 1/10 · 31 December 2022]

This documentary is just awful. Incredibly biased on Ms. Cleo's behalf. The woman was a scam artist but this film tries to make you feel sorry for her, while offering up no proof at all. Just drones on and on about meaningless things that have no real connection to the subject matter. Just another blatantly biased documentary that was cobbled together to revise history and push an agenda. Most of the people interviewed have little to no actual connection to Ms. Cleo. The ones who do are biased and there are no conflicting or contrasting views presented. Also, Raven-Symoné is absolutely intolerable in this. Why is she in it in the first place?

Lazy documentary

[Cima123 · 2/10 · 18 March 2024]

This is not a very well made documentary. A good number of the people being interviewed have no personal connection with miss cleo. Nobody in the documentary knows anything about her background/childhood, everyone is just speculating. This film then takes a turn towards the end when it just beings to pander to certain audiences and prolongs useless scenes. This movie is filled with a bunch of useless filler scenes and celebrity commentary that brought absolutely nothing to the documentary. Terrible documentary, no one interviewed knows anything about Cleo. Just random white people saying their her family, but yet they have no idea where she's from.

Put it on for background noise and was sobbing by the end

[sarahbuhlman · 10/10 · 19 December 2022]

I had no intention of being actually engaged with this but was sobbing by the end. Miss Cleo was just some hack from 90s infomercials right? Who knows, but she was also a human with a life and a soul and trauma with people who loved and cared about her. I can just hope that people in my life look back on my mistake sworn as much grace and forgiveness as the people that love her looked back on her.

It also just gives me some mad nostalgia for waking up in the middle of the night on the couch seeing her and being so curious and having idea what is happening and it feels like some weird closure to at least a part of my childhood.

Whatevs, watch it if you have a soul.

Great Documentary. Call Me Now!!

[imvaughn · 8/10 · 28 December 2022]

I really enjoyed this documentary. I remember Miss Cleo from my childhood but didn't know much of her story. It was interesting learning about the lawsuit and hearing from her friends. It seems like she was a really kind soul who wanted to help people.

I'm happy that she was able to find happiness, laughter, and love after all she's gone through in her life. I'm still not sure if she's a real psychic but I lean towards yes.. people think being a psychic means you know 100% of the future. I don't think it does. But I do think she had a gift.

I'm happy to hear she didn't live her final days out destitute and alone. But surrounded by loved ones full of happiness.

R. I. P Miss Cleo.

Capital Theft at It's Finest

[pdxqraj · 10/10 · 22 December 2022]

Engaging documentary regarding an iconic Black woman that was skewered in the public arena. Heartbreaking to hear of her humble, tumultuous beginning that inconclusively led to her poor handling of affairs later in Seattle and beyond. The Miss Cleo commercials couldn't be avoided in the 1990s and early aughts, as she was an engaging being. Fallout from the scheming duo that devised the Miss Cleo brand seem to have buried the person, while leaving the business moguls unscathed. Miss Cleo, her patrons and the company employees were all used and mistreated. Glad to see that this documentary illuminates this cautionary tale for anyone with a tremendous, personal talent that can be abused.