The Amazing Johnathan Documentary review: Must watch till the end

Hulu just released a documentary on The Amazing Johnathan and it’s a must-see this year. Check out our review of the new Hulu Doc below.

When we heard that Hulu was releasing a documentary on the Amazing Johnathan, our initial reaction was “about time”. But then when we learned of the circumstances surrounding the documentary’s development, our optimism sank quite a bit.

There’s nothing wrong with the documentary, it’s actually quite an astonishing tale told by Ben Berman. What’s sad is the project came up when Johnathan announced that he’d been diagnosed with a terminal disease and given a year to live. That it was in 2014.

It’s now 2019 and the Amazing Johnathan is still kicking, that’s the good news. The bad news is that the road to developing a documentary on the magician/comedian had a lot of bumps along the way. For instance, the development of multiple features on Johnathan at the same time.

Ben Berman, the director of this documentary, pointed out that several production teams came out of the woodworks saying they were greenlit for a separate documentary on his subject. Johnathan gave them the go-ahead and it threw a wrench in his plans.

To make matters worse, one of the teams mislead Johnathan about who their employer was and it created trust issues between Ben and Johnathan. Neither party was at fault but the confusion made a salvageable situation an extremely volatile one.

What’s interesting is out of all the different film crews who decided to shoot a feature around the Amazing Johnathan, the ones released before Berman’s doc were seen by very few people. The screening for one — which Berman captures on camera in the doc — had a little over twenty people in attendance. That number includes Berman and another journalist in the audience so there were less than twenty people there for the premiere.

After all of the confusion around multiple crews making docs on Johnathan ran its course, the time came for Berman to finish his own. He was somewhat puzzled for a time and almost gave up at one point but he managed to complete the documentary in the most fitting way. We won’t spoil exactly how Berman caps off this amazing feature but it’s definitely worth a watch.

What did you think of The Amazing Johnathan Documentary on Hulu? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary is currently streaming on Hulu.

(Source: Hulu)