When Golden Boy met Laughing Lad

>> Taking a peek inside Siegfried & Roy's Magic Box

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Most of us won't make it to Las Vegas anytime soon, and those who do may not get around to taking in a performance by Eurotrash magicians extraordinaire Siegfried & Roy (alternately referred to as Golden Boy and Laughing Lad, respectively).

The good news is this: thanks to the kooky elves at Imax and L-Squared Productions, every detail of the lurid, overblown spectacle that is a Siegfried & Roy show can unfold before your begoggled eyes in lurid, overblown 3D at the Paramount, where The Magic Box is screening.

But who are these two men? Where did they come from? What's with all the white tigers and albino lions? And what exactly is the nature of their relationship, anyway?

As their names imply, Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Uwe Ludwig Horn spent their childhoods prancing about Bavaria in lederhosen and knee-high socks. The film, narrated by Anthony Hopkins (affecting the Millionaire Perfesser persona we all loved so dearly in The Edge), dwells at length on the boys' formative experiences.

Young Siegfried meditates on a mountaintop and tools around on his dinky little bike, pining away for his first book of magic tricks as giant 3D clocks and playing cards swoop through the air like giant crystalline acid flaskbacks. Meanwhile, Roy survives a traumatic dip in a quicksand pit before--apparently--simply stealing a cheetah from the Bremen Zoo.

What the two soon-to-be "partners" have in common is distant, unaffectionate fathers, men seemingly scarred by the trauma of watching the Fatherland get its ass kicked all over the Russian Front. Now, we all know what emotionally stingy dads lead to, don't we? I'll tell you what: leather pants and billowy pirate blouses, facelifts and salon tans, that's what. All of which are as essential to Siegfried & Roy's grandiose productions of today as pyrotechnics, showgirls, disco balls and albino felines. Which raises this issue: if these cats are so damn rare, how come these middle-aged pretty boys seem to have enough of them on their special studio/ranch/love nest to populate the wildlands of Wisconsin?

The Magic Box leaves many questions unanswered, but then mystery is the essence of magic. And there's mystery aplenty to be found in Sir Hopkins' oily platitudes. "Siegfried has always been the magician," he intones, "and Roy the magic." What the hell is that supposed to mean?

The Magic Box opens Friday, October 8