Call Me Miss Cleo

Engaging documentary regarding an iconic Black woman that was skewered in the public arena. Heartbreaking to hear of her humble, tumultuous beginning that inconclusively led to her poor handling of affairs later in Seattle and beyond. The Miss Cleo commercials couldn't be avoided in the 1990s and early aughts, as she was an engaging being. Fallout from the scheming duo that devised the Miss Cleo brand seem to have buried the person, while leaving the business moguls unscathed. Miss Cleo, her patrons and the company employees were all used and mistreated. Glad to see that this documentary illuminates this cautionary tale for anyone with a tremendous, personal talent that can be abused.

This is not a very well made documentary. A good number of the people being interviewed have no personal connection with miss cleo. Nobody in the documentary knows anything about her background/childhood, everyone is just speculating. This film then takes a turn towards the end when it just beings to pander to certain audiences and prolongs useless scenes. This movie is filled with a bunch of useless filler scenes and celebrity commentary that brought absolutely nothing to the documentary. Terrible documentary, no one interviewed knows anything about Cleo. Just random white people saying their her family, but yet they have no idea where she's from.

Parroting the other low reviews, really missed the mark. Almost no direction or attempt at trying to build any kind of interest. Just snagged the low hanging fruit.

Hard focused on some weird tangents and glazed over the interesting parts. Just hopped over the actual crime and lawsuit bits in little spurts as fast as possible.

The biggest thing is they really skipped over the people that got taken advantage of for the sake of trying to make you feel bad for her. If it was really that bad of a scam, they probably could have dug about and found at least a few victims to interview right?

We get zero of the victims perspective (besides a few tiny secondhand stories) or how they felt. If there were so many documented complaints and you spoke with prosecution post trial and settlement, you probably could have gotten at least 1 or 2 to speak. Having someone who spent a lot of money/time on the hotline and how they view it today would have been an interesting counter view.

This doc just has a very clear target audience. I'm just being honest. You might like this if your black, lgbtq, or both, but you also might feel like they hard pandered to that demographic as a way to make a lazy documentary off of a nostalgic figure.

There's for sure a super interesting story here about that industry and Cleo's personal story intermingled. It's a really interesting cultural phenomenon. Unfortunately, all this doc amounts to is a "We love Miss Cleo" party.

Plus, the editing is poo.

Before the widespread use of the internet, there was something called 1-900 or 1-800 connections on the telephone for "services". In the 1990's, in the multitude of late-night infomercials was the Psychic Readers Network, a group of people hired to read Tarot cards in a system that charged in the neighborhood of $5/minute. The biggest name of this group of people was Miss Cleo. I really don't know if you are not aware of who this person was that you would be interested in this documentary, but it is interesting anyway for a handful of reasons. People from Seattle were perplexed to see this woman who claimed to be a Jamaican voodoo priestess since she seemed so familiar to them. Her life in Seattle is a good basis as to how to take this person as you see this story unfold. The irony of this is that she was used by the PRN to make millions for them while some poor souls poured their hearts out to her and others in a desperate need to find answers to their problems. The Florida people who owned PRN used her identity (?) to make their money while paying her and others very little. The ending of this movie really confused me as she bravely fought her own confusions and angst to find a happy resolution to the rest of her life. The problem was for me. . .what self image was being addressed? I found the whole thing to be ironically confusing, yet I could not stop watching this.

Call Me Miss Cleo (2022) is a documentary my wife and I watched on HBOMAX last night. The storyline follows the 1990s infomercial icon and what little information is available about her upbringing, rise up the psychic ranks, fall from grace and life through her final days.

This documentary is cocreated by Celia Aniskovich (Surviving Jeffrey Epstein) and Jennifer Brea (Unrest) and contains perspectives from celebrities Raven-Symoné (That's So Raven) and Debra Wilson (MADtv).

This series was fascinating from beginning to end. The Seattle art theatre interviews and background were insightful and her high school year book pictures were fun. It's impossible to not get nostalgic watching the commercials and hearing their background operations. However, while it was nice hearing her post life stories in interviews, it felt like they were a bunch of suckers still falling for her scams...though it made me smile that she found happiness. I do wish they were able to interview members of her immediate family or any children she may have had.

Overall, this is an entertaining documentary that leaves you wanting more. I would score this a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.