The Escape Artist is a film that should be really good.  It has an excellent cast, a fabulous cinematographer in the director's chair, and Francis Ford Coppola overseeing the whole thing.  Yet the poor dialog and meandering plot make this film a jumbled mess with some good scenes, but not much else.

Danny Masters (Griffin O'Neal) is the young son of Harry Masters, a great escape artist who died trying to escape from jail.  Danny's spent his life studying magic, and wants to make the big time.  So he runs away from his grandmother's house and tracks down his aunt and uncle who used to be Harry's assistants, and are now doing a two-bit act in some night club.

After moving in with his relatives, Danny runs into Stu Quinones (Raul Julia) in a local magic shop.  Stu isn't quite all there, having been in out of asylums all his life.  He's the son of the corrupt mayor though, so he can do pretty much anything he wants in town, and does.  Stu slaps Danny around a bit, and in return Danny lifts his wallet.  Only the wallet is really the mayor's and it's filled with stolen $100 bills that the feds are looking for.  Now Stu's in trouble with his father, and comes after Danny. After some convoluted plot developments Danny hatches a plan to get out of trouble, but it involves escaping from the same jail that his father was killed in.

This movie was the first feature directorial effort of Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (Being There, The Right Stuff and The Natural among others) and the direction was okay.  The movie featured some very good actors including Terri Garr, M. Emmet Walsh, Jackie Coogan, and Dezi Arnez in his last screen performance, and they all did a great job.

Unfortunately the script wasn't very good.  There are some very good scenes, but when you put it all together it doesn't add up to very much.  This is a character piece, but the characters aren't that interesting.  Viewers really don't ever care about Danny or his quest to best his father, much less Stu and his relation with his father.  Both character's motivations are muddled to say the least, and that really hurts the film.

This movie is based on a novel, and it really feels like they chose the best scenes from the book, but didn't worry about the connecting material.  The characters go from scene to scene but you're never sure why they do what they do.  The most irritating thing about the film is that Danny's aunt is a real psychic who can see the future and read minds.  This ability saves the kid's life a couple of times and it feels like a real cop out.

The dialog was also corny.  At one point a cop says "I heard you were in the building, baby." to a Raul Julia's character, and that's not the worst of it.  The dialog was very unnatural and took the viewer's attention away from the movie.

On the plus side, the music is very good and gives the film a fairytale feeling that helps cover up some of the weakness, but not all of it.  The acting is very good too, with Griffin O'Neal (Ryan's son and Tatum's brother) giving an excellent performance.  He preforms all of the magic tricks himself without the help of editing, and does a very good job.  (His "Oil and Water" was very nice.)

Audio:

This movie comes with a 5.1 and a stereo surround mix.  The sound quality was very good.  The music had a full range and came through beautifully.  There wasn't a lot of use made of the soundstage, the rears were only used for music and the front didn't have a lot of directionality.  The dialog was clear and clean and sounded fine.  A good sounding mix.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen image was about average for a movie from 1982.  There was a lot of grain in the picture which really marred the presentation in places and the reds were accented a little too much, but aside from that the image was good.  The colors were solid and the blacks were dark.  Digital defects were minimal.

Extras:

This disc also come with a commentary director Caleb Deschanel, production manager Barrie Osborne, and magic consultant Ricky Jay.  This commentary went a long way towards explaining what the director was thinking, I just didn't agree with his decisions most of the time.  I disliked the way they mixed costumes and customs from different time periods, it wasn't a period piece but it wasn't a contemporary story either.  They did that on purpose, to give the movie a "timeless quality."  I just found it irritating.  The comments by Ricky Jay were most interesting, and I appreciated his comments on the history of magic and the origins of some of the tricks.

Final Thoughts:

This movie has some charming scenes, but in the end it just isn't that good.  I never really connected with the main characters, and couldn't understand their motivation.  The plot is very muddled too.  It goes from scene to scene without anything really linking them together.  A family friendly movie, it might be worth watching for Griffin O'Neal's good performance, but make it a rental.