The x-Files has not done magic quite like this before. “The Amazing Maleeni” is a nifty caper flick that plays out before your eyes like a misdirecting magic trick. It features an elaborate plot, one way too exaggerated for the sake of television to work, and Mulder evidently has everything figured out too implausibly early in the game. But it is still fun to watch it all play out.
A magician named The Great Maleeni performs a trick during a show at the Santa Monica pier in which he turns his head completely around at the prompting of an unimpressed heckler named LaBouge. It is an impressive trick that shuts LaBouge up. However, Maleeni is subsequently found dead in his van with his head cut off. The strangeness of the happenstance attracts Mulder’s attention.
The beheading was all an elaborate plot to do just that. Maleeni and laBouge are in cahoots. They concocted a plot after discovering Maleeni’s twin brother, a bank employee, dead of a heart attack, to kill two birds with one stone. Maleeni poses as his brother at the bank and fakes his death at the pier while pretending to be a paraplegic in order to avert suspicion. Labougee did time in prison years ago for pick pocketing where his life was made miserable by an incarcerated bank robber named Alvarez. The two concoct an armored car robbery to frame Alvarez in revenge, then plot to use mulder’s fingerprint and badge number to make a huge electronic funds transfer over to themselves. Mulder catches on, snatching away the playing card with his fingerprint before they can pull it off.
You have to buy into several big whoppers here. First, that is one elaborate plot to pull off. Taking revenge on Alvarez has no point beyond the ego stroking that would come from successfully doing so. Two, Maleeni and LaBouge get themselves arrested for an airtight alibi, then are supposedly such fantastic escape artists, they can get out of jail, plant $1.8 million in alvarez’s place, and be back before anyone notices. I cannot see it. Finally, Alvarez may be a psychotic ex-com, but he did not rob the bank of $1.8 million. No one cares that he is going up the river on a frame up. I am not terribly sympathic to the scumbag, but still. If he is going to go to jail, it ought to be for a crime he actually committed.
None of this plot works really well if you give it much thought, so I suggest just enjoying the misdirection. Think of it as an actual magic show. Would the entertainment value not be ruined if you knew exactly how every trick worked/ it is also a nice touch that Maleeni is played by a real magician named Ricky Jay. Interestingly, Jay and Jonathan Levit, who plays LaBouge, will both star in Flashforward five years after “The Great Maleeni.”
There is no true x-Files here because of the lack of paranormal elements, but ‘The Great Maleeni” is a clever and entertaining installment. At least david Duchovny looks like he is having fun here rather than counting down the episodes left in his contract. Gillian Anderson is pretty cute in that top hat, too, no?
Rating; *** (out of 5)
The x-Files has not done magic quite like this before. “The Amazing Maleeni” is a nifty caper flick that plays out before your eyes like a misdirecting magic trick. It features an elaborate plot, one way too exaggerated for the sake of television to work, and Mulder evidently has everything figured out too implausibly early in the game. But it is still fun to watch it all play out.
