Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

Directed by Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein

(Not rated)

***

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Magician Ricky Jay makes a “slippery documentary subject,” said Nathan Rabin in the A.V. Club. The New Jersey–bred veteran card-trick master has spent his career controlling every bit of information that his audiences receive, so he isn’t about to allow a couple of filmmakers to peer behind the curtain of his act or even his personal life. But he’s as great a raconteur as he is an illusionist, so letting Jay supply the entertainment can’t really fail. Because he’s “as much a student as master,” we see lots of clips of mostly forgotten magicians who were once his mentors, said Alan Scherstuhl in The Village Voice. We also see clips of Jay as both a boy magician and a long-haired guest performer on The Dinah Shore Show. “Best of all,” though, “we see him sitting right there in front of the camera today, shuffling a deck, performing impossibilities, again and again.” Other documentaries can work at revealing secrets, said Stephen Whitty in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. “There should always be a place for someone who can somehow make you believe, for just a moment, in magic.”