An Honest Liar

An Honest Liar (2014)

97% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 35 reviews)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Tyler Measom, Justin Weinstein

Starring: This is a documentary about James Randi

From: Several different companies

I explain why in my Letterboxd review below but once I discovered this was a thing it was a must-see for me; I have been familiar with Mr. Randi for a long while and this is something I do rate pretty highly.

This was another Netflix Instant watch. I knew I had to watch it as soon as I discovered this was a thing. That is because it's a documentary on the life of James Randi.

If you don't know who The Amazing Randi is, he is a great magician who turned into the championing of science and reason in the mission to take down such charlatans as psychics, faith healers, those that profess ESP powers, and others that claim to have paranormal, occult or supernatural powers. He had a clear influence on such people as Penn & Teller (he was on their Bullsh*t show a few times) and Bill Nye, The Science Guy... they are all in this. I've known for him for a long time and read my first book from him when I was a teenager, and I still have a copy of it now, though I've read a few things from him. So as I am greatly interested in the sort of work he does, love the way he takes down those fakers, and enjoy documentaries even though I don't see them often enough, that may color my rating and why I give it pretty high marks.

An Honest Liar covers his life, notes famous examples of him combating deceivers (from Uri Geller to Peter Popoff; if you don't know those names it's probably because Randi's debunking of these fakers tanked their careers) and talks about his personal life. He did everything from participate in a magic trick done on an old Alice Cooper tour to appear on an episode of Happy Days as himself. There are some surprises along the way. I won't reveal what those are, except that for me it wasn't Randi's sexuality. I did hear when he announced a few years ago that he came out of the closet. You do get to see him live with his longtime partner, someone who I knew nothing about beforehand.

If you are a skeptic who enjoyed seeing Penn & Teller go after these sorts of people on their old show BS, then I definitely do recommend this documentary... and I also recommend his works as an author. As you may be able to tell from this, the style of the books are light and entertaining, and it's an easy read and also great seeing him go after people who sometimes genuinely believe they have special powers but usually know they are trying to trick innocent parties.