Documentary Review: 'Call Me Miss Cleo' a Strange and Cringeworthy look at Famed TV 'Psychic'

Call Me Miss Cleo (2022)

Directed by Jennifer Brea, Celia Aniskovich

Written by Documentary

Starring Miss Cleo

Release Date December 15th, 2022 (HBO Max)

Published December 14th, 2022

Call Me Miss Cleo is high level cringe. This is a rare documentary where the filmmakers and the subjects appear equally delusional about the subject they are discussing. In this case, the subject is late former fake TV psychic, Miss Cleo, real name Youree Dell Harris. In the 1990s, Harris invented the character of Miss Cleo while working as a playwright and performer in Los Angeles at the Langston Hughes Theater. Then, she left for Florida where the character of Miss Cleo became a full on persona that Harris adopted and claimed was real.

Picked up by a pair of con artists operating a fake psychic hotline, Miss Cleo jumped off the screen. She was a charismatic pitch woman whose staged phone calls which involved her seeming to read the minds of callers and giving them important information and advice, became not merely a local sensation, she was quickly a nationwide phenomenon. Late night television become Miss Cleo's home and her broad, FAKE Jamaican accent cut through the detritus of her infomercial competition to garner a loyal following.

Behind the scenes, Miss Cleo would remain in character at all times despite rarely, if ever, taking a live call from one of the millions of desperate people who called her psychic hotline. Instead of Miss Cleo, callers to the Psychic Readers Network would end up talking to an underpaid, completely unlicensed, part time worker whose job it was to keep people on the phone for 5 minutes, regardless of what the person was calling about it.

In the strongest portion of Call Me Miss Cleo, the documentary brings forward the people who answered calls to the Psychic Readers Network who express regret over their role in bilking desperate people looking for Miss Cleo's sage, Jamaican Shaman, view of their future. Most people who called were desperate, sad, lonely individuals who could not afford these calls but hoped against hope that a look into their future might solve their problems. People who likely needed real help from mental health professionals were instead consoled and lied to by part time employees pretending to be avatars of a fake Jamaican Shaman and Psychic.

Then, as quickly as Miss Cleo became a cultural phenomenon, she was gone. Lawsuits filed against the con artists who employed Miss Cleo and the part time fake psychics on the 800 number she shilled for, led to the end of the Psychic Readers Network. As for Miss Cleo, she managed to escape the lawsuit. Legal documentation exists that legally defines Miss Cleo as little more than a mascot for the 800 number, a pitch woman and actress hired to perpetuate a brand. And yet, Miss Cleo never stopped living as Miss Cleo, Jamaican accented psychic.

Here is where the documentary, Call Me Miss Cleo, takes a turn into cringe territory. Interviews with friends of Miss Cleo work very hard to rehab her image from con artist to beloved and supportive friend and real psychic. Miss Cleo's closest friends maintain to this day, several years after Cleo herself passed away at the relatively young age of 54, that she was an actual psychic. Cleo lived the gimmick to the end and found a circle of friends who enabled her to live this lie to the last days of her life.

The presentation of these interviews with Miss Cleo's friends contains a strong indication that the filmmakers are joining in an effort to rehabilitate Miss Cleo's reputation. The final act of Call Me Miss Cleo is a loving appreciation of Miss Cleo, her coming out as Gay, and her support of the LGBTQ community. These are wonderful things and they should be embraced and celebrated but while the documentary does that, we also lose the perspective that this was a delusional person who pretended to be Jamaican psychic until the day she died.

Making things extra cringe, is how Miss Cleo's circle of friends is entirely made up of white people. I don't feel I can say this with the kind of authority that a black critic could, but it needs to be said. The final act portrays Miss Cleo's circle as having their very own 'Magical Negro' in real life. Miss Cleo pretended to be a sage Jamaican psychic and her friends apparently accepted and furthered that delusion. The documentary doesn't portray this as strange or wrong, but rather as wholesome and perfectly normal. I viscerally recoiled as it became clear how uncritically the documentary presented this group of white people willingly enabling this woman of color in pretending she was a Jamaican Shaman Psychic. Her lie seems to have been as important to them as it was to her.

I feel like the documentary should be slightly critical about this fact. Perhaps the question should be asked as to why this group of people felt it was appropriate to further this woman's delusion. These people appear to genuinely care about Miss Cleo but that doesn't make this situation normal. Nothing about this is normal. Miss Cleo created a reputation that was built upon stealing from poor desperate people and finished her life not ashamed or repentant, but instead remaining in character, alleviating her guilt by keeping up the lie in every moment of her life.

The documentary seems to want to let Cleo off the hook for this. Even an actual Jamaican woman who was critical of Miss Cleo when she was appropriating the worst stereotypes Jamaican culture on behalf of a pair of white male con artists, appears to soften her opinion of Miss Cleo by the end of the documentary and this softening is essential to the overarching attempt toward making us feel sorry for Miss Cleo. The attempt to rehab this woman and to ignore how bizarre her end of life was, calls any seeming objectivity in this documentary into question.

I feel like my description of the documentary is overselling it. Don't get me wrong, this story is crazy but the presentation is relatively mundane. Early on, we get a mostly fact based look back at the scam that made Miss Cleo famous. Then, half way through the movie, after Miss Cleo escapes the lawsuit that brought down the empire built on her persona, all objectivity is tossed to the wind as Call Me Miss Cleo works to rehab Miss Cleo's image despite her insistence that she was both Jamaican and a psychic shaman.

The final act of Call Me Miss Cleo is filled with anecdotes about her life, her coming out, her support of fellow LGBTQ people in her circle, and all while everyone admits, she was still acting like a Jamaican psychic. The movie downplays this fact while also not hiding it and the disconnect in this approach is never commented upon. I don't need the documentary to bury Miss Cleo but pretending that this isn't wildly insane is bizarre and a strong indication that the filmmakers have bought into the myth of Miss Cleo as much as her circle of friends did.

Call Me Miss Cleo is a strange documentary. It's both well researched and completely lacking in objectivity. It's both a story that is strangely fascinating and piece of bizarre propaganda that exists to make excuses for a woman who was either deranged or a con artist or both. By trying to make Miss Cleo's story appear wholesome and happy, filled with loving and supportive friends, we lose the fact of how insane this story is, and that really should be the perspective here. This is crazy.

I'm baffled by Call Me Miss Cleo. I can't believe this documentary exists as it is. It's creepy and strange how no one involved appears to have any perspective on this. How anyone treats this as a normal, sweet, wholesome story of family and friendship, is just beyond comprehension. Imagine someone entering your life and becoming your friend and all the while they are putting on a fake French accent and pretend to be a witch. That's a reasonable comparison to what happened with Miss Cleo and her circle of Florida friends and no one, including the makers of this 'documentary' thinks this is completely insane.

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