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Absolutely the worst movie.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Magic is directed by Richard Attenborough, has a screenplay by William Goldman based on his novel and stars Anthony Hopkins, Burgess Meredith and Ann-Margaret.Anthony Hopkins gives one of the greatest performances of his career as the troubled ventriloquist who descends deeper and deeper into madness. Hopkins actually learnt ventriloquism for this role and is very good at it.Corky(Anthony Hopkins)is a struggling magician who hits the big time when he creates an act with a dummy called Fats. The act makes Corky a star but soon Fats is taking over Corky's life and he loses his grip on reality. It's a chilling film and that dummy sure is freaky.Burgess Meredith is superb as Corky's agent Ben Greene. Meredith is especially brilliant in a scene where he walks in on Corky having an argument with Fats as if he were real. He asks Corky to go five minutes without speaking as Fats, it's a tense and painful scene to watch. You can see how concerned Greene is for Corky's mental health and also how freaked out he is by the things Fats says. Hopkins excels in that scene as it becomes more and more obvious that he most likely will not be able to last the five minutes.Ann- Margaret is very good as Peggy the love of Corky's life. Fans of the TV series MASH will be delighted to see David Ogden Stiers appear as a man from a TV network who Greene asks to watch Corky's act.Magic is a great horror film from Richard Attenborough. Hopkins makes Corky a very pitiable character who becomes trapped in the nightmare that is his own mind.

Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins) has a horrible first outing performing magic. Much later, Corky is back as a ventriloquist with a foul-mouthed dummy called Fats. His agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) is about to sign Corky a TV deal for half $Million. Corky balks at the medical examine and runs back to his childhood home town. He reunites with his high school crush Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret) who is stuck in a cold marriage with high school friend Duke (Ed Lauter).Fats is creepy and ugly as heck. Anthony Hopkins is very effective as this pathetic oddball character. It's a little surprising to realize that Richard Attenborough directed this little horror between his two epics. I don't think horror is his natural genre but all this one really needs is Hopkins.

Magic is a film about a man who had a psychological problem, he had double personality disorder, and he lived out his second persona through a ventriloquist's dummy named Fats. The whole movie boils down to one character and that is Corky (Anthony Hopkins), it was important that he made his portrayal strong, because the whole movie is about him and him alone and how he was finding it hard to live his life without his Dummy Fats.The part in the movie that was really stood out for me was the scene where Corky and Ben sat face to face, and Ben asked Corky to sit 5 minutes and not let Fats speak a word at all, the whole 2 minutes it lasted was just intense, with you thinking, "Is he going to break?" "When is he going to break?"Magic is a clever movie one that we should all seewww.lagsreviews.com

Long before he taught us how to make liver with a nice chianti, Anthony Hopkins starred in this maudlin thriller about a down-on-his-luck magician who finally makes it big with his magic card trick when he adds an X-Rated dummy into the mix. No, the dummy is not a politician with marital problems, but a Charlie McCarthy/Chuckie-like doll with a foul mouth who can turn into Linda Blair's "The Exorcist" character by turning its head totally around and all sorts of other creepy things that make you wonder why people want to become ventriloquists in the first place. Hopkins, it seems, was a shy sort of fellow who suddenly makes it big, and when he decides he can't handle the fame anymore, he returns to his old neighborhood where he rents a cottage from an old high school classmate (the gorgeous Ann-Margret) who has always had a crush on him and loves "Fatty", the name of his creepy looking doll. But putting the doll down and becoming comfortable in his own shoes isn't something Hopkins can do, and he becomes "possessed" by the personality of this doll whose image he lives through. Sort of an alternative to the "Cyrano de Bergerac" plot, "Magic" never becomes a horror movie, just a curiosity piece of what will happen when Hopkins' transformation is completely done into this growing murderous creature, especially when Ms. Margret's estranged husband re-appears on the scene.Anthony Hopkins had a career that hadn't truly sprung into super stardom yet. After his role in the 1968 film version of "The Lion in Winter", he drifted between mostly forgettable movies and some stage work, getting critical acclaim for this film that the same critics who praised him for it had panned. He truly is amazing, his theatrical voice really ringing in your ears, much like Richard Burton's. The presence of Ann-Margret as well as Burgess Meredith and David Ogden Stiers in supporting roles pale in comparison to the presence of this star.