Comments on: Movie: The Amazing Johnathan Documentary

Post: Movie: The Amazing Johnathan Documentary

Stanczyk — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 05:26:55 -0800

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

By: Frayed Knot

Frayed Knot — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 13:03:04 -0800

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.

By: Stanczyk

Stanczyk — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 13:10:50 -0800

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

If anything, the smoking meth was faked.

By: rhizome

rhizome — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 16:19:09 -0800

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.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 19:21:41 -0800

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.

By: riruro

riruro — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 22:03:26 -0800

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.