A Critical Examination of the MindReader Trailer

A new Christian evangelical movie is out called MindReader. Let’s watch the trailer to see what type of insights we can get into the film.

It opens with a shot of a marquee for The Great Dexter.

The movie takes place in 1974. Was anyone still calling themselves “The Great ____” at this point in time? That seems like something that was at least half a century out of vogue. Someone should bring that back. I miss the days when magicians were like, “Damn. If I don’t describe myself with an adjective, someone else is going to choose one for me. And I’m probably not going to like that one at all.” It’s a good technique because it turns any overt criticism into a mixed message at the very worst. “Joshua Jay the Magnificent sucks shit.” Well… which is it?

We then get a clip of Dexter’s show. It seems like his whole schtick is getting people to write things down on pads and then he tells them what they wrote on the pad.

That’s a lot of pad-based magic. He then asks the audience, “Please, show us your pads.” A line shared by both Dexter the Great and Dexter the Menophiliac.

We also get a peek at Dexter’s promotional material,

This is, of course, a direct rip-off of the Alexander tag line.

I’m a big believer in intellectual property and I feel like Dexter should have to change his to “The Man Who Also Knows” or “One of At Least Two Men Who Know.”

We are then given a surprisingly accurate seeming review of the show as being a “boring routine at a two-bit theater.”

But then we learn that this “boring routine” is “packing out” the theater every time they put on a show.

That makes the opening marquee more confusing to me. If he’s so popular, why is he part of a variety show? This is 1974. It’s not vaudeville. This show seems wildly out of place. I mean in 1974 people were going to the theater to see Godfather II and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They weren’t going to variety shows featuring The Great Dexter, a puppet act, a singer, and comedy xylophonist Professor Lamberti.

As for our main character, Dexter himself is part Jesus Christ and part Mitch Hedburg.

He closes his show by saying, “My name is Dexter and I don’t really do magic, I just read minds.” Which doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. They put it in the trailer as if it’s somehow meaningful, but I don’t really get it. If he closed his show by saying, “I don’t really do magic, I just read pads,” that would at least feel somewhat more accurate.

Watching the rest of the trailer, I’m not sure exactly what is going on in the movie. It seems like the local magic association is trying to get Dexter’s show taken down because… they can’t figure out his tricks or something? Or they think his shitty mind reading is going to make their magic irrelevant or something like that? I’m not sure.

They might be right, given that this—hilariously—is the shot used to illustrate the local magic association.

I genuinely think Dexter is maybe supposed to be a proxy for Jesus? 🤷‍♂️ I really have no idea. This is a movie that’s being shown one theater at a time at the moment. So I’m going to have to track down a showing if I want to fully understand it. The only thing it says on the movie’s website is:

“The year is 1974 and The Great Dexter is the closing act in a variety show at The Temple Theatre. His amazing mindreading act fools everyone, including the local magicians’ association. As Dexter’s popularity grows, so does the association’s jealousy as they try to shut his act down and figure out how it’s done.”

Other than that, there’s not much to go on. The site has a “gallery” page, but is it technically a “gallery” if it only has one picture?

Beyond the one-picture-gallery there’s little more besides the trailer on the movie’s site. Well, there’s a link to get a signed picture of the actor who plays Dexter at ChristianMovies.com. And it was on that site I also learned about one of the diretor’s other Christian films. I didn’t look into this one, but the title sounds like it could be a look at one of the church’s darker periods and the forcible oral sodomy of so many young altar boys.