Word: magic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...days ago. Kennedy was five hours late, not arriving until 2:30 a.m. Thousands waited in the autumn night, overjoyed that at last the slender young candidate had appeared. The American promise stood in front of them. They did not want to go to bed, to break the magic moment...
Attenborough and Goldman miss a good bet by failing to suggest that Fats is really alive somehow. We never doubt that it is Corky expressing his subconscious desires through the dummy when Fats speaks. Stripped of its suspense in this way, Magic becomes a superficial portrait of a schizophrenic...
...after Corky has just slit someone's jugular. Hopkins' performance nearly salvages the movie, even though he is strongly hampered by the efforts of a bad dialect coach, who must think that Catskills residents talk like third-rate Brando imitators. Actually, Hopkins' accent is the most unpredictable aspect of Magic...
...fact, the treatment of Fats displays considerable creativity. The camera photographs him like a real person, so that he seems to change expression and even react to individual lines. His presence enlivens the generally charmless Magic, though not even he can save the unhappy and unsatisfying climax. Somebody -- or several somebodies -- blundered badly with this film. The most intelligent thing in it is the dummy...
...Perhaps because some dreams are better left alone lest they shatter at a touch and lose their magic in becoming real. This movie does just that to Tolkien. But that won't stop anyone from turning out the second half of Bakshi's tour de force. Once the Ring took control of its possessor, nothing could stop him from wanting more and more, even if the ultimate result was for the worst. Hollywood has the Ring now, and the business of perversion proceeds as Tolkien might have predicted. "...In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows...