(Photo Credit: Fort Lauderdale film festival)
I think some would argue that having the credits be done to The Animals' "We Gotta Get Outta this Place" was the 2nd alarm bell for this movie (I will not say that I am too big a person to make a joke about the first being the title, nobody is above that. I will not change), and the shit show we are about to see, but I would argue that it is the 3rd: the 2nd was in fact the opening shots being a dead woman in a car, then lingering, leering, tongue-drooling slathering of a camera upon a scantily dressed Frenchwoman in leopard print, before a gratuitous full frontal bathing shot in a river and then further closeups of her dresing in leopard print before strutting away. That was effectively a fucking clarion bell for what followed.
A hollow, empty facsimile of a film, devoid of any heart, warmth or understanding of the genres it pillages in this quest for titillation. Attempting to be a throwback to "private eye" movies, replete with what the filmmaker clearly thought was witty rapport, but instead is smug, stilted and feeling like a 1st year film student's take on Raymond Chandler or the Coen Brothers; the central mystery aims for quirk and complexity, but instead stumbles and fumbles its way through like Zach Braff with basic structure. Events are random, unconnected, and strung together with the elegance of inserting Zach Snyder hagiography at a funeral - scenes are overtightened, cut short, and for every good transition (I like one involving a ceiling fan to a pool, and another I can't remember) or cute shot (I liked the sunspots in the Frenchwoman's sunglasses, once the camera was done oggling her on a sun lounger) there is a desperate sense of throwing scenes on the page, never letting them breathe, simply hopping sporadically and frantically from one plot cul-de-sac to another.
Kind of like a Coen Brothers movie, funnily enough, but with none of the charm, the wit, or good writing and tension.
It's quite frankly an embarrasing showing (more so than this blog, honestly) as characters throw out "pithy" one lines and exchanges, but are less people and more vessels for whatever the writers thought would "sound film noir" in the moment. Thus it sounds stilted, and the miscasting of Qualley (side note: she fucking rules in "The Substance", watch that three times instead of this!) as a "hard bitten sassy lesbian detective" doesn't help, coming across more as a "highschool roleplay" than anything else (don't let the makers read that, unless they get ideas... Jesus fucking Christ) as try as she might with the awful material being given, it never rises above "quoting something and thinking it is a pastiche or homage". But when they have her march into a bar to finger Aubrey Plaza on a bar stool, and have 2 sex scenes with her and her pierced nipples? You'd better believe that they are interested in the character then...
The makers wish to be "fun throwback trash" but don't write plots, characters or people of interest or note first: thus when we're expected to "put that to the side and enjoy the sex scenes" it doesn't feel like trashy cinema, it feels gross. All of the best exploitation cinema (I am a fucking connoisseur of that shit, trust me) and stuff unfairly maligned for sexy, topless parts, at least remembers to have plots or characters or moments where people are allowed to emote and act, not roughly strung together scenes, not a mystery which solves itself off screen and with no intervention from the detective (aside from flirting with the perpetrator at a cross roads whilst she's dressed in a scarf, knee high boots and a robe, and little else). But we have sex scenes! We have those! There are 5 scenes of fucking, and a dreadful recurring "gag" wasting Charlie Day on hitting on the lead, so that we can see that she is very much into girls, you see, because (despite all of the lesbianism), she's very much a lesbian, you see?
Reading it back makes me sound like I'm averse to lesbians or a prude of some sort, and because our critical landscape is fucked more than Margaret Qualley in this backwards arse movie, some may read into that. I am CRAVING some diversity in cinema, and we've made a lot of progress, hell this is progress! Lesbians too can have their worst fucking pervy shit detective movies, shadows of creativity and empty "homages" to better detective throwbacks, just as the boys can! We've done it! We've achieved equality!
Equality at last! Just make sure that you forget the almost entirely white cast (at least "Drive Away Dolls" has the ever-wonderful Geraldine Viswanathan in a leading role) and don't focus on the writing, editing, plotting or humour. We made it kids!
Oh, and another thing, a coda to this:
(Last one, I swear)
The film is confused about what it's aping and what it's paying tribute to. When you make a throwback to trash, you make "Toxic Avenger: Unrated" or "Manborg" or "Clown in a Cornfield", or if you're making a detective film you put a spin on it (think "Brick", "Vengeance" or "The Nice Guys"): you come into MY FUCKING HOUSE, you make a film which understands the genres its doing, aesthetics aren't enough. The surface level always needs more. As refreshing as it is to see the film fail on its own merits of bad writing, it's still kind of a bummer to see Ethan Coen behind it. Even the worst Coen Brothers movie ("The Ladykillers", a fairly uncontroversial pick I feel) is merely "fine" (it doesn't feel Coen Brothers-y, and doesn't come close to the original Ealing Classic) and stands head and shoulders above this. A baffling misfire. Jesus fucking Christ.
Chris Evans was fun.
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