The Amazing Johnathan Documentary (2019)

August 18, 2019 5:26 AM

What begins as a documentary following the final tour of a dying magician - "The Amazing Johnathan" - becomes an unexpected and increasingly bizarre journey as the filmmaker struggles to separate truth from illusion, and himself from his subject.

Now available on Hulu

posted by Stanczyk (5 comments total)

Spoilers ahead!

So until the last 10 minutes or so, I was convinced this was all fake, and had been setup. But Simon Chinn agreeing to be a producer changed my mind, so I'll just call this the weirdest damn doc I've ever seen. Still not sure I enjoyed it, but I'm not gonna forget it any time soon, that's for sure.
posted by Frayed Knot at 1:03 PM on August 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

How about that very last phone call with Chinn? I guess he found his ending.

If anything, the smoking meth was faked.
posted by Stanczyk at 1:10 PM on August 18, 2019

I was thinking to myself "the headband guy?" but I hadn't seen his standup in forever so I wasn't sure. Yep, it's him! If he's come from prop comedy to possibly "Exit Through the Gift Shop" adjacent work, I'm OK with that.
posted by rhizome at 4:19 PM on August 18, 2019

That was interesting. I went into it only sort of remembering him and not knowing anything at all about the documentary and I think that helped. The entire film I wanted to go look him up on Wiki because I thought I remembered hearing he died but wasn't really sure.

Reminded me of Adaptation.
posted by bondcliff at 7:21 PM on August 18, 2019

I did not know about Amazing Jonathan before this, but I'm glad I watched this. Hulu normally recommends terrible sitcoms to me.

It looks like that after dealing with the woman who quit and the man who didn't seem to be in a hurry, Jonathan didn't have much faith that Benjamin would complete his doc either. So it made sense he would want to work with another team he assumed had better track record.
posted by riruro at 10:03 PM on August 19, 2019