Very interesting and informative. The human element makes the film more compelling.

Faith healers and divine spiritualists are just the worst, y'know? A neat documentary on fraud and fraudsters, but more interesting as a discussion about the psychology behind people's innate desire to be fooled, and the line between deception and deceit when the underlying intention is under consideration. Presenting fact-based explanations for supposedly bizarre phenomena and getting some form of rebuke is pretty classic territory that political thrillers have explored ad nauseum. Going against this solid (if familiar) premise is Randi's own, surprisingly complex personality - a charismatic individual who gets a somewhat perverse pleasure from countering the prevailing opinion, from being berated because he feels (not without some justification) that he is the smartest man in the room, but silently grappling with the ambiguous moral cutoff between lies for a larger lesson and the incidental damage caused in telling those lies. While the aspects regarding Randi's sexuality and relationship with his partner seem rather out of place early in the runtime, they do ultimately introduce a pretty interesting aspect to Randi's character as the relatively unhurt victim of a deception, but still one that possibly allowed himself to be fooled because of his own self-interest in a loved one. (3.5/5)

The parts where Randi is debunking psychic phenomena was very interesting, but much of the film is about Jose Alvarez and I just didn't care about that guy's story.

Fascinating from beginning to end.

A documentary about Amazing Randi and how he publicly exposed fake psychics and healers(Peter Popoff being one of them) a great way to open your eyes and see how most religious televangelists are full of crap,and how these con men are taking advantage of innocent and naive people.

No matter how educated you are...you can always be deceived . It's unfortunate and I suppose makes for entertaining stories.

A brief review, no analysis and especially not bullshit fluff. This documentary tells the story of an extremely interesting individual and all of the crazy stuff he did in his life. An honest liar, exceeded my already high expectations and opened my eyes to an area of entertainment I believed to be all in good fun. This showed me the shitty things people did and how this awesome man made people aware of the lies. An extremely interesting documentary worthy of praise I give this my highest review of a documentary so far a 9/10

A fascinating look at fascinating people. A few editing choices are questionable; some section transitions felt weak or discontinuous. Overall, however, An Honest Liar is a great meditation on the field of deception and its practitioners--faith healers, magicians, filmmakers.

Great documentary on someone I've always found fascinating and likable.

Truly a great documentary!

A not completely perfect, but fascinating and well constructed important film about a magician, in a long tradition of magicians, fighting fraud and promoting rational education and thought.

This was a wonderful and educational documentary. James Randi is such an honest, compassionate and fascinating man. And all of that comes through in this movie.

A good documentary that could have been hatched in half of the 125 minutes it used to tell the story.

I remember Uri Gellar being outed by Randi during The Johnny Carson Show. People can be so gullible, because they are scared in the face of death and want to believe in something bigger than themselves. What a brave person Randi is.

I thought it was a brilliant documentary with a slight wink! Would love to meet the protagonists and interview them. As a former beautician in a short point of my life, I would take my scissors along and cut randy's eyebrows!

Magician turned exposure of charlatan, the story of The Amazing Randi.

The cunning, combative career of James "The Amazing" Randi, slightly better known as a professional disprover of psychics and faith healers than as an escape artist and illusionist of his own right. His career arc is an unexpectedly exciting one - he rubbed elbows with Johnny Carson and Alice Cooper in his prime - and as showy as one might expect from a lifelong performer. I found his transition right from the stage into the professional debunking game to be a natural one, not to mention noble (he considers work as a magician to be entertainment, while paranormal hoaxes are just thievery) but some see hypocrisy there. While it stays on the subject of his career, the documentary is a fascinating one. It switches gears in the final half-hour to focus on his personal life, where he's ironically caught by a private swindle during production, but apart from the obvious parallels to his working life I didn't find that long aside terribly interesting. Still, a good story, though perhaps not one that needed a feature-length documentary to explore.

I really liked this movie.This was an amazing Doc on a man who devoted his life to deception and debunking it. very thought provoking, compelling, and at points will tug on your heart strings. I would recommend this to anyone even people who aren't really into documentary's.

One of the best documentaries I've ever seen...

Fascinating documentary about James Randi, better known as "The Amazing Randi" and his personal quest to debunk various cons and unexplained mysteries (i.e. psychic surgery, mentalism, those who channel spirits, ESP, psychokinesis, telepathy and other frauds). What makes the film interesting beyond simply recounting Randi's many cases of debunking the supernatural is a subtext about the impact of Randi's debunking amounting to telling the world that Santa Clause isn't real. This film does what the best documentaries do, which is to tell one surface level story, but also has a subtext that's more universal. In this case it's about the public and media being willingly gullible to be taken in my these various phonies. The public really doesn't want to hear facts or the truth. They would rather have the romance of lies told by a charismatic character. Randi saw all these various charlatans as scoundrels, particularly those who preyed on people's money and health, and made a crusade to take them down. However, that proved much hard than one would think. The most telling moment of the film is the final words spoken by Randi, when he state, "No matter how smart or well educated you are, you can be deceived."