After breaking up with his longtime stage partner, a famous but jaded Vegas magician fights for relevance when a new, "hip" street magician appears on the scene.
This movie contains 2 potentially triggering events.
No abuse is shown on screen, but some implications do exist. For example, a magician mentions that he has partially deboned a bird in order to fit it in a small container for the purpose of a magic trick. Another magician gives a small, starving boy a rabbit and as the boy walks away he pulls out a knife, implying that he plans to eat it. There are also a couple brief mentions of using big cats in magic shows, which can be construed as abuse.
Not squashed, but a magician uses a power drill to put a hole through his own skull. Only a small amount of blood is shown, but the scene is shocking and, in my opinion, disgusting.
A magician cuts into his face to retrieve a playing card during a magic trick. The scene is somewhat shocking and gory with a fair amount of blood shown. He is later shown stitching up the cut himself.
One of the characters has a mild stroke and is visited in the hospital by some of the other characters. He doesn't look or behave at all like a person who has had a stroke. He seems perfectly fine. No medical procedures are shown.
One of the tricks involves drugging (with a vaporized form of a plant) large crowds of people without their knowledge or consent and then relocating them before they wake up, making them think they were magically teleported.
One of the tricks involves drugging large crowds of people without their knowledge or consent and then roughly carrying them, transporting them in the backs of trucks, and relocating them before they wake up, making them think they were magically teleported.
Burt Wonderstone's real surname is of German origin and there is some implication that he might be Jewish. He is bullied as a child, but this seems to be primarily because he's small for his age and kind of nerdy, not because of his religion or ethnicity.
No one is misgendered exactly, but in a school cafeteria, a little boy takes out his pill bottles and states that he has to take testosterone because he is "dangerously close to be a girl", and some nearby students laugh.
After using a power drill to put a hole in his own skull as part of a performance, a character immediately takes on a facial expression, posture, and speech pattern and is stereotypical of comedic depictions of mental disabilities. Throughout the remainder of the film, the apparent disability is treated as a joke.
No children are abused, but in the first scene a 10 year old boy is punched by an older boy, and is shown to be left home alone to make food for himself on his birthday because his mum is working.
While on a charity visit to an African country, people are shown and discussed to be addicted to eating a plant that makes them instantly lose consciousness for an hour.
No, but a magician is shown lying motionless on a bed of coals for maybe a minute. He plans to sleep through the night there and claims to feel no pain, but (comedically) shrieks in pain several times. Sizzling sounds can be heard when he touches the coals. In another scene, he holds/moves his arm in a candle flame long enough to burn/scar an entire sentence into it.
There is a depiction of hanging during a magic act that looks fairly realistic until the last instant when it's clearly shown to be faked. The noose and gallows are used again later in the movie but the magic act is shown to be a complete failure at this point and, although the magician does put the noose around his neck, the performance doesn't look remotely real.
During a stunt to keep his eyes open for 3 days, a magician has large streams of pepper spray sprayed directly into his still open eyes. When the same magician later drills into his own head, one of his eyes suddenly crosses and stays there motionless, presumably due to brain damage.
someone in the crowd close to the camera v* at 49 minutes both visual and audio, then not technically v* but jim carreys character v* candy at an hour and 1 minutes if that seems triggering, its really not but might be a reminder cause its practically above the camera