Home Invasion (1997)

Are you ready for some card tricks? ABC fills the pesky non-Monday Night Football hour with the gregarious Penn Gilette and the silent Teller popping up at malls, schools, private homes and the beach with a dizzying array of sleight-of-hand tricks. For anyone who has ever been left wanting after seeing one of their tricks on David Letterman's show, this is an overflowing bounty. Duo's signature is a constant state of misdirection, flubbing one or more aspects of a trick --- even to the apparent point of death or mutilation --- to make the finale that much more spectacular. They even explain tricks: one with cards so anyone can do it at home and another with cups and balls that, rather than explicate, is an astonishing display of technique. Throughout, Penn combines carnival barking with political soapbox ranting --- subversive, sublime and wildly amusing --- and bolsters the weirdness factor of even the most ordinary trick.

Steven J. SantosDirector