Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Excellent adaptation.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The cameras are turned away so you can't see the "trick". It's all sloppily made camera edits and the people are obviously told to act surprised because no-one's this gullible. TruTV needs to compensate for the amount of time I've spent watching this "magician". Take this off this channel. There are already plently of stupid shows on there.

It's not magic, it's camera cuts and bottom of the barrel acting. It doesn't take you watching even a single full episode to deduce how he does his "magic tricks". He says one thing or another, there's a terribly edited camera cut so you can't see what is happening, then the camera pans back and "magic!" If that alone doesn't give it away, notice how in 99% of any scenario that it's just Michael and the plant, even in a business during the middle of the day, there is never anyone standing or sitting right there who's not a part of the act. It is just terrible and I wish TruTV would compensate me for the time I've wasted watching some a terrible, terrible show.Edit: The overwhelmingly "not helpful" votes for me review show you that it's real. The positive reviews are beyond fake to the point I'm embarrassed for the people who think they're fooling anyone.

If you accept this show for what it is at face value, you'll probably be very entertained by it finding yourself exclaiming, "How did he do that?! That's amazing!" Carbonaro's tricks are pretty funny, and the people's reactions are also amusing.However, if you look past that, you'll find a hollow shell of a show made up of simple camera tricks and cut-aways along with poor actors in order to make you think that all of the tricks are legitimate. The tricks are too elaborate to be sleight-of-hand as in most magic. For example, there is an episode where Carbonaro is working at a sporting goods store, and a "random woman" comes into the store to return a sleeping bag that's too small. She places the bag on the counter, he inspects it by opening it up, and after a few cut-aways later, there's a giant snake coming out of the bag, and of course, the woman is shocked. In the same episode, a "pizza delivery woman" brings a pizza to the counter, he says that he ordered the wrong kind of pizza, he places the pizza on a spinning chair, spins it a few times, and then after a couple cut-aways, he opens the pizza box, and suddenly, it's a different pizza. Even if these people were not actors, the props would still need to be set up in advance so that the trick could be effective. Carbonaro has to know about the pizza box and the sleeping bag in order to make a trick out of them. These types of circumstances are common across all the episodes.If these tricks were done with one long continuous shot, then yes, they would be very convincing. Unfortunately, his "magic" essentially consists of showing you one thing, telling you to close your eyes for five seconds, and then suddenly showing you something else and asking you to act amazed. If you try really hard to suspend your disbelief, you will find entertainment in the show. If you look past that and analyze Carbonaro's "tricks," you'll easily see that it's just actors pretending to be impressed regular people trying to convince you to be entertained.

While this show may have some entertainment value as far as the comedic nature of most pranks do not, repeat do not, believe for a moment anything you see in it actually happened in real time. It's all editing. Give me a camera and I can make appear or disappear anything from a thimble to an elephant. I could also make a 10 storey building disappear digitally. All it takes is professional seamless editing. This is why the vast majority of the marks have to be in on the gig and only rarely are they unsuspecting walk-ins. This show is the perfect example of why "magic" should always be performed live and never on camera and I kind of resent the fact that there's no disclaimer explaining their editing. They try to portray Michael Carbonaro as a magician performing live when that's clearly not the case. There are some funny and well-thought pranks so some people will enjoy the show, just don't believe it's real!!!