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.

I rated this a 7 because I was engaged the entire time, but wished it had went deeper.

Throughout this documentary I had many conflicting thoughts - oh! She's a talented playwright, actress, artist . . . NO wait, she's a conwoman! Aka psychopath with anti-social personality disorder, nooo wait! . . . She has Disassociative (multiple personality) identity disorder . . . No wait??? Shrug, idk, she's for sure a fallible and dynamic human being.

I did enjoy the flow of this documentary. I liked learning about Miss Cleo's life. I do wonder how so little of her actual background could have been discovered by the documentarians. It stated that she had approximately eight adoptive siblings and adoptive parents, so how were none of them found? Although it did explain that even her birth certificate was extremely difficult to dig up.

Perhaps they should've went into how most things were not digitized back then, thus much more difficult to find. Though I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I still find it surprising that so little facts were shared about her upbringing. Why did they not interview some of her former classmates from the all girls private school? The expert on Jamaica and the African Diaspora was integral.

I really loved that her two romantic partners were interviewed near the end, as this was the highlight for me. Prop 8 was beyond reprehensible, and the fact that Miss Cleo fought for the community made me applaud her efforts.

My only gripes are - Why didn't the documentary mention what type of cancer? I shouldn't have to google this after watching. And the suicide trigger warning at the beginning made me think that she killed herself, when the only mention I recall was that she first thought of it at age 7. Lastly, what did she do for work or money during the 15 years following the lawsuits? She claimed to not have made much money from the psychic scams, so I am curious about the work she did afterwards (this being a documentary and all.)

Personally, I adored the contributions of Raven Symone to this! She was our voice, the voice of us infomercial viewers back in the day. I wouldn't have enjoyed this nearly as much without her delightful presence and commentary.

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.