Movie Review: "The Prestige"

I wanted to see this movie when it first came out, because, duh, Christian Bale. (Hugh Jackman is a happy thought, too.) It also looked like it could be a good movie (it's about competing magicians in the early 20th century). But seeing as I had no one to see it with, I had to wait for it to come out on dvd. And seeing as I'm too cheap to rent new releases, and they kept not sending us a 'rent one get one free' coupon, I still hadn't gotten around to seeing it. But then this week, oh happy day, they had a 5 for $25 sale on used dvds. :) So, since it cost one more dollar to own it than it would to rent it, I went ahead and bought it (along with 'HP & the OOTP', 'Hairspray', 'License to Wed', and 'The Break-Up').

But anyway...on to the review.

It's really good. It's a different type of movie (it's listed under 'suspense,' which I suppose would be right), but I liked that. At a few points it may have felt a little slow as they're trying to outdo one another, but then you get to the end and it all wraps up and you forget that it ever seemed slow, and you want to see it again to see what you missed the first time around.

The acting was good - my only complaint was Scarlett Johansson. I didn't feel like she fit her role. But other than that I was impressed. One of the things I thought of afterwards was that none of the actors were speaking with their own accents (except possibly for the woman who played Christian Bale's wife - I haven't seen her in anything else, so I don't know how she speaks normally). At one point, though, Andy Serkis (who played Gollum in 'LOTR') says the word 'pocket' and I couldn't help but hear 'pocketses.' But that was me, not him. :)

I watched it again two nights after I watched it. (I wanted to watch it the next night, but I didn't have time.) I highly recommend it. And again, if you don't like suspense or magicians, who cares. If nothing else it has Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. ;)