I quite liked The Kid Detective (2020). It’s a mystery comedy– it reminds me a lot of a (much
I quite liked The Kid Detective (2020). It’s a mystery comedy– it reminds me a lot of a (much better) movie I really love called Zero Effect. It’s a very familiar premise– one of those “oh, everybody thinks of that one” concepts– but one I have a huge soft-spot for: what was it like for Encyclopedia Brown after he grew up? Obviously, there’s Mystery Team. I think Ed Brubaker had a comic book at one point that just sort of disappeared, that was vaguely in that vein. (I don’t know what happened there, and its not manga so all that’s none of my business anymore). People have done it before. But I thought this one was funny (though not an out-and-out comedy like Mystery Team), and I liked the mystery, by the end of it. Plus, for the last few years, Adam Brody turns up in little things and he’s been “picking” movies (I don’t know how much say any actor has, but) where I think he’s being well-used. He’s a former teen heartthrob so him being in this movie about a guy depressed that he’s not who he was as a kid… It’s clever! But also there’s something about him where I’m kinda always going “aww that guy, he’s not so bad” even when he’s doing things that are not so great or are super-pathetic or he’s just being a massive loser or whatever! Promising Young Woman certainly used that in a pretty excellent way, that’s maybe one of the things I’m most fond of about that movie, and I think Ready or Not had the same thing, too.I think there’s just some actors you just root for…? I don’t know why. (You see his scrawny butt without pants at one point, if any of you are fans of buttocks…)Zero Effect is the better movie (by kind of a lot) because it’s a little less in its own world as this one and it’s more just a really great Sherlock Holmes movie. I mean, it’s a Sherlock Holmes movie– there’s so much more to play with. (See also, Without a Clue). But this one definitely had that thing where … when it came time to solve the mystery, when the big “ohhhh” clue gets revealed (but before it was explained), I started having a really fun time trying to race ahead of the movie and put it together in my own head and… I couldn’t figure one part of it, but then the movie had a very satisfying explanation for the part I kept getting confused by and kept sticking on. It’s a movie that plays by the rules– I feel like I could’ve solved it if I’d paid more attention…I don’t know– that’s just a genre I really love, mystery comedies. I’ll like a good one; I’ll like a bad one; I’ll like a terrible one; it’s okay with me. They only make a detective movie once every three or four years, at this point– that genre went out of fashion a long, long time ago, but … It’s just … It’s just satisfying. Because as long as a puzzle gets solved, you kinda got what you paid for…? A lot of other genres don’t have that same “well did a puzzle get solved? it did? so then what’s there to complain about, asshole” quality. It makes life simple and easy… A character regretting his past also hit home because I re-read everything I’ve ever written about movies for this dumb blog for the last ten years, to transfer it over to letterboxd, and it turns out this blog is awful! All of the writing and opinions– bad! Who knew? Answer: lots of people knew! They’ve said so! That’s what “UGH that guy is the worst” meant! Another mystery solved! -- source link
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