There is hilarity right off the bat when we see Colin Firth as Stanley Crawford, a famous magician known as Wei Ling Soo, made up and dressed to look Chinese, pulling off a trick that disappears an elephant as part of his audacious act. When the disguise comes off, he is the handsome Firth we know, but here playing Stanley as a very conceited, self-confident Englishman.

Stanley has a pal from boyhood, Howard Burkan, played effectively by Simon McBurney, who has also been a magician, but has not achieved the fame with which Stanley has been showered. Howard informs Stanley about Sophie Baker, a young woman who has earned a reputation as a very successful psychic medium who can achieve such feats as communicating with the dead. Anything like that is pure fakery, Stanley insists, and he sets out to meet Sophie and expose her as a fraud. She is played charmingly by the very attractive Emma Stone, and we can immediately sense where the story may go in the romance department.

Stanley attends a séance in which Sophie is trying to connect a late husband with his wealthy widow Grace Catledge, played with comic earnestly by Jacki Weaver. There, at the Catledge villa, Stanley observes the mumbo jumbo with the requisite tapping and the supposedly achieved contact with the dead, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot detect any trickery.

Sophie knows she is being challenged, and reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick, there is sharp, amusing hostility between Sophie and Stanley, although all the while they are becoming increasingly attracted to one another without wanting to admit it. Hamish Linklater engagingly plays Grace’s son Brice, a very rich, enthusiastic young man who is smitten by Sophie and eagerly pursues her with a proposal of marriage with a life of utter luxury. So why would she want to abandon all of that for the very skeptical Stanley?

A great delight in the film is the performance by the always-extraordinary actress Eileen Atkins as Stanley’s colorful, very perceptive Aunt Vanessa. There is also a fine performance by Marcia Gay Harden as Sophie’s mother. Plaudits are due production designer Anne Seibel and costume designer Sonia Grande for their contributions to the film’s sumptuous look.