Today is the eighth anniversary of that fateful night when a tiger named Montecore went postal on illusionist Roy Uwe Ludwig Horn, dropping a permanent curtain to the performing entity known as Siegfried & Roy™. Unwitting premonitions of Horn’s career-ending mishap are scattered through Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box, an IMAX film that was dusted off and given a top-hush screening at The Mirage last night, in celebration of Horn’s 67th birthday.
Shot in IMAX 3-D between 1996 and 1999, The Magic Box never played in Las Vegas because Mirage Resorts had no theaters in which to show it. (An anachronism in the final credits lists Steve Wynn as Mirage chairman, which gives you an idea of just how dusty this relic is.) It grossed $5 million in its first year of release and hasn’t been heard from since.
Despite the fawning applause of an exceptionally ass-kissy audience — two young men behind us were in a state of nonstop rapture — the movie is indescribably bad although it would give a Freudian analyst a field day. For instance, young Siegfried (played by a waxen child “actor”) strays into a magic shop, represented as a long, womb-like tunnel at the end of which is a forbidding hag. Over this, old Siegfried is heard to say, “The world of magic is not easy to enter.” At another point, during a transatlantic cruise, young Siegfried looks deeply into the eyes of young Roy and says, “In magic, anything is possible.” The Magic Box plays like a 50-minute “coming out” video. The gay isn’t just in the house, it is the house — especially listening to Roy reminisce in Tallulah Bankhead–like tones on the soundtrack. Snippets from Sig ‘n Roy’s old stage show are lent allegorical meaning: World War II is symbolized by empty suits of armor marching in unison (being on the losing end of WW II seems to have weighed rather heavily on the Fischbacher and Roy households). The duo is depicted suffering oppression at the hands of aggressive, snake-wielding, amazonian women and simian subhumans. Feel free to speculate as to what’s going on there; is this a movie or a desperate cry for help?
Even the famous white tigers are reduced to set dressing, particularly when Sig ‘n Roy are shown marching through the desert, robed like Moses and Aaron, leading their tigers to the Promised Land that is “Little Bavaria,” the twosome’s mansion. Roy is also posed in several bedroom tableaux involving tigers, filmed with worshipful eroticism that’s … incredibly fucked-up. Brain bleach! Aaaaauuuugggghhh! Make it stop!
Despite the ministrations of the Real D process, the 12-year-old IMAX 3-D footage looks incredibly primitive by current standards. The Magic Box‘s three-dimensional effects are as rudimentary as the old “A lion in your lap!” days of Bwana Devil. The cumulative effect is of looking at View-Master slides for nearly an hour. And, yes, there are 3-D, low-angle crotch shots of Siegfried and Roy — the latter sporting a prominent codpiece. Journeyman director Brett Leonard doesn’t seem to have watched a movie since Disney stopped making cheapies like Pete’s Dragon and The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, and the CGI are laughably primitive. Reduced from IMAX proportions to a regular screen, Leonard’s attempt at spectacle is visually banal. The soundtrack drips with endless faux John Williams orchestral tempestuous, from the pen of Alan Silvestri, while the most rancid ham in movies today, Anthony Hopkins recites mind-numbing drivel about getting in touch with one’s inner child. What The Magic Box seriously needs to do is make contact with its inner adult.
Last night’s sneak peek clearly presages an attempt to cash in on the current 3-D mania. But the movie’s brief running time will make it a tough sell to exhibitors and audiences. While it looks older and creakier than the 72-year-old Fischbacher himself, under the right circumstances (i.e., after two or three drinks), it’s good for a chuckle … or twenty.
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