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Liar by Robert Baxt Review:

One gimmick, one DVD and $50 bucks. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Effect

Not so much magic here. Get a volunteer on stage and have them hold a prop of your choosing as you claim it's a lie detector. You then ask a series of questions. The lie detector goes off and thus (theoretically) hilarity doth ensue.

Method

You're supplied with a plastic gimmick that allows you to make the alert sound whenever you'd like. That and some arts and crafts, and you've got everything you need, almost. This type of thing, in order to be good, relies 99% on personality and performance prowess and pretty much nothing else.

You're supplied with a 20-ish page PDF that contains lines, gags, jokes, "funny" questions to ask your spectators, etc. Humor is relative, of course, but I found many of the lines to not be funny, but rather insulting to the audience.

However, if you've got a personality for this type of performance and don't mind those types of jokes, or you have your own script you might use, then you'll be able to easily do this effect. The gimmick is just a simple push of the button.

However, I did not like the sound of the alert that was made when the lie detector "goes off." You'll hear it in the ad trailer. To me it sounds nothing like a sound that I would associate with a lie detector. In fact, he used the gimmick a few times in the trailer before I realized that it was the sound of the lie detector. If you don't mind the sound in the ad trailer, then you'll likely be fine with the method.

Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy is accurate. It's brief, but it tells the truth . . . at least I didn't hear any weird noises when I read it.

Product Quality

The product quality is pretty bad. The DVD is not the best footage and the sections where they teach you to make the various types of props to use for a lie detector are poorly taught. They go little, if any, depth. Further, Baxt says that his friend Dorian Lachance created a version of one of the props. He then says that he'll show us a clip that teaches us how to make the prop. The clip did no such thing. It was a very short clip of Dorian Lachance apparently holding the camera in one hand and the prop in the other. He mentioned a couple of things that he did to make his prop, but gave literally zero details.

The problem was that some of the modifications he made needed some depth to fully understand how to create them and how to use the added features in performance. None of that was covered. He also suggests that to learn lie detector routines, we should search YouTube. Then what? Steal the routines we see? Bad form, Mr. Baxt. He does show some of his own footage and the footage of a friend of his that includes a lot of the material that's also found on the PDF. The included PDF, however, was very poorly laid out and difficult to read.

Finally, watch the ad trailer. If you don't mind watching Robert Baxt acting the way he was acting in the video, then you won't mind how he acts in the DVD. Personally, however, I found it a bit hard to watch.

Final Thoughts

For a PDF of a bunch of "lines" that range from stupid to insulting to chuckle-getting to very funny, a poorly produced DVD and a gimmick that you could probably get at a dollar store, you get to pay $50 bucks. That's a bit on the steep side for what you're getting. So you have to ask yourself a few questions. First, do you like the sound of the alarm in the ad copy? Second, do you want to do a lie detector routine? Third, do you need some scripting and lines to use in a lie detector routine that are mostly mediocre and insulting? Finally, is all that worth $50 bucks? For me, I would have been very disappointed if I paid $50 bucks and got this product in return.

Final Verdict:
2.5 Stars with a Stone Status of grubble (very few gem-ish ideas surrounded by a whole lot of rubble).