Best (and Worst) Vegas Magic Shows

by Jake Gosselin | Oct 26 2007

Bodog's Best of Vegas series has seen it all. We have checked out every nook and cranny of Sin City and have brought you insights into the best buffets, best shows, best bars, best places to meet beautiful women, best suites, best steak houses and even the best places to throw up among others.

And, throughout all this research, we have consistently avoided one subject: magic shows. You see, for various reasons (detailed below) magicians are annoying.

But, magic shows are popular in Vegas, and readers have been clamoring for more information on them. So, we have taken the liberty of providing a list of the best Vegas magic shows, but never one to deny my own indulgences, they come along with a list of the biggest dorks in the business.

What is wrong with magicians anyway? As far as performers go, I'd rank their worth in society somewhere between mimes and rodeo clowns. Yet, they strut around with preposterous hairdos like coked-up peacocks.

A possible explanation for these delusions of grandeur could be that the magicians get so caught up in their act and ability to amaze their audiences, that they start to think that they really do have some sort of super power. I call this the "Illusionist Delusion." Sure, they always assure the audience that it isn't really magic, but they play it up in the act like it might be.

Exhibit A: Criss Angel. Ask a person on the street what they think of Criss Angel and his TV show Mindfreak, and nine times out of 10, they'll spit on the ground and curse his misspelled name. Angel's arrogance and insistence on showing his emaciated abdomen is baffling. He seems to suffer from a classic case of the Illusionist Delusion. Still doubt it? Criss Angel's Website speaks for itself.

Angel doesn't have a regular live show in Vegas, but he does shoot his show Mindfreak there. He is also scheduled to appear in a new illusion-based Cirque du Soleil production at the Luxor, which will open around September 2008.

He has also recently teamed up along with Uri Geller (I'll get to this idiot later) for a new NBC show called Phenomenon. Yet, another spin-off of American Idol in which Angel and Geller will search for the next great mentalist.

Exhibit B: David Copperfield. Copperfield is famous for making big things disappear (the Statue of Liberty), marrying way out of his league (Claudia Schiffer) and, now, raping someone (name unknown).

Copperfield allegedly invited this woman to his home in the Bahamas for a party. When she got there, the place was empty. He insisted she stay, despite his deception, and then he raped her, allegedly.

But, he seemed like such a nice guy, right? Wrong. He came across as an arrogant prancing prima donna. So, may I be the first to say, "Sayonara." Let's watch him disappear in a cloud of judicial smoke and get on with the lighter side of magic, making fun of the boneheads who perform it.

Exhibit C: Uri Geller. I hate this man, and I hate the public who continue to embrace him even more. This guy is a liar and a fraud, and can't we all ignore him and move on with our lives?

Thanks to the excellent work of The Amazing Randi, a magician who doesn’t suck, Uri Geller was exposed as a fraud back in the '80s. The reason he needed to be "exposed" in the first place was because Geller had the audacity to expect his audiences to believe he had supernatural powers – a dangerous line that is sometimes danced on by other magicians, although they are rarely stupid enough to state it explicitly.

But now, as mentioned above, Geller is riding the horse of iniquity all the way back into the public eye with a role in the upcoming NBC series Phenomenon.

Exhibit D: David Blaine. While Blaine might suffer from a touch of the Illusionist's Delusion, he has managed to take magic to the streets with not only interesting illusions but with some interesting feats of willpower. For the most part, these feats are fairly interesting, as he starves himself in boxes, lives underwater until his skin starts to slough off and stands on a big pole for hours. What a show-off.

Blaine also has a famous levitation trick where he typically turns his back to the audience and levitates up into the air. This has become a fairly standard trick, and Criss Angel even showed how it's performed on his show. At least one method for doing the stunt involves a fake leg that makes appears from behind, like the magician is standing on two feet when, in fact, he has stepped out of his pants with one leg standing on a ledge in front of himself. He appears to be floating from behind.

So, what's wrong with that? Well, Blaine does this trick on the streets for his shows and records the crowd’s amazement and screaming, "Oh, my God, you can fly!" Then, he goes and shoots a second version without a crowd but with a crane and a wire. Using this method, he lifts himself up several feet instead of just a few inches, which makes all the other magicians suffer from levitation envy. Not exactly a fraud but not exactly kosher either.

Now that you know how hard we are on magicians here at Bodog, you will hopefully respect our choices when we offer up our list of the best magic shows in Las Vegas (with magicians who don’t suck).

Hans Klok

Although Hans Klok is guilty of suffering from the classic magician's haircut, he is also guilty of having Pamela Anderson in his show.

His show, The Beauty of Magic, is being performed at Planet Hollywood until Dec. 8, 2007. So, catch it before it disappears.

The World's Greatest Magic Show

The World's Greatest Magic Show has a rotating cast of 8-10 of the best magicians in the world, performing their best tricks and illusions.

The legendary magician Kevin James (not the King of Queens actor) is a regular performer here and is worth seeing in and of himself. James is the actual creator of many of the tricks that you see performed by other more famous magicians.

Penn & Teller

Not everyone likes Penn & Teller, but they make the list of good guys because their show lacks pretense. It's original, and best of all, they tell you how their tricks are performed.

Yes, it's true. They don't pretend to have magic powers, they just pretend to be funny.

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