“World’s Greatest Magic Show” and “The Rat Pack Is Back — The Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey & Dean”

Network TV made 2007 the summer of the Vegas underdog, and stars out of people who were kind of stars already.

You're forgiven if you watched NBC's "America's Got Talent" and didn't connect magician Kevin James to his nightly duties in "World's Greatest Magic Show" in the Greek Isles hotel.

You're even off the hook if you're not aware the Greek Isles exists. The place is so low in the Las Vegas echelon that stars of the roommate production, "The Rat Pack Is Back -- The Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey & Dean," joke about how they live on borrowed time, until the day Steve Wynn should look out his window and decree that the joint be blown up.

"Talent" may edge the public closer to the respect that James -- who made the show's Top 20 before getting X'd by judge Piers Morgan -- enjoys within the fraternity of his fellow magicians. An announcement introducing his climactic segment of "World's Greatest" informs the crowd that he creates all his own illusions, something not said of the others in the rotating variety format. Some of their routines are open stock in magic catalogs, and a couple of these guys need to coordinate which one is going to burn up the little rope or make the bird disappear.

In spite of that, this modest show with the immodest title offers something different. It's the one place in Las Vegas to see the sleight-of-hand magic usually bypassed for big-box illusions. The just-right 400-seat showroom -- a surprisingly nice one built by Debbie Reynolds when she had her name on the casino -- puts you near the close-up stuff while still giving James and Roy Shank a large enough stage for more theatrical segments.

The format makes the show a bit of a pot-luck proposition. Only James and comic host (Paul) Kozak anchor the roster year-round. The current guest stars are a mixed bag, highlighted by Dan Sperry's bird act. He makes them materialize at will, and even reverses the way you often see one trick done: He tosses a bird into the air that turns into a scarf.

Silent German illusionist Dirk Losander has at least one impressive illusion, floating a table right over the first booth in the audience. Shank adds humor to illusions that are familiar but welcome after all the close-up work. The first assistant-swallowing cabinet doesn't appear until 42 minutes into the show.

But it's James who really makes "Magic" his showcase. The maniacal sequence he performed on "Talent" has his mad doctor lop a victim in half and then staple him back together -- but not before the victim breaks away on his hands. A young girl from the audience helps James work miracles with crumpled paper on the stage steps. And his climactic snow illusion shows the right way to do a trick that's tossed off as filler by Hans Klok at Planet Hollywood.

At this level of show business, you can't afford to waste anything.

Dick Feeney also produces "Rat Pack," which has been making one-eyed Jew jokes about Sammy since 2002. Here, too, quality control is at the mercy of who is currently in the cast. What doesn't change is an attempt to re-create one of the legendary Sands romps of the early '60s, complete with a 12-piece band and lots of booze schmooze.

Fans of old Vegas and the retro lounge scene tend to be a forgiving lot. Nitpicking -- the young Sammy didn't sing "Mr. Bojangles," etc. -- is more a game to us than a reason to turn against the show.

We also know it's tough to find one, let alone three guys who can even get close to the charisma of the stars they are impersonating. It's here that Sandy Hackett, who oversees the show, provides hidden structure in his Joey Bishop guise to smooth the continual cast changes. Costumes and sight gags substitute for the unforced charm of the real Copa clan, and a scene-stealing cameo by Marilyn Monroe (Staci Bostik) takes the pressure off the guys.

In the current cast, Brian Duprey (himself a TV talent show veteran of Fox's "Performing As") looks more like Frank Sinatra than some who take on the role. Johnny Edwards is sporting some mighty weird hair as Dean Martin and is pretty stiff as a jokester, but tries harder to sing well than the real Martin did in the last 20 years of his career.

Kyle Diamond is all over the room as an athletic Sammy Davis Jr. and -- unlike the real summits at the Sands -- actually gets to finish a song. All three do better with the crooning than the socializing. If ever drinking on the job could be justified as a facilitator, this might be the case.