BEFORE: Football season starts today, at least for me it does. I don't waste my time watching the regular season Patriots games, why bother if I'm fairly sure they're going to make the post-season? So I'll tune in for their first playoff game, and then it's just two games until the Super Bowl. I'm always looking for a way to save a bit of time.
Moving on toward the next film on my list from 2018 - that's easy, I can get there in four steps, no problem. Though it's going to cost me another potential link to the "Avengers" franchise, but that's OK, I've got at least a dozen others. I'm more worried about linking to "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" because I think I'm going to use up my Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender films in January, too. So I'm sort of pinning my hopes on James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain, but hey, there's always Ato Essandoh, too.
Michelle Monaghan carries over from "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"
THE PLOT: A murder mystery brings together a private eye, a struggling actress, and a thief masquerading as an actor.
AFTER: I remember my ex-boss saw this film as part of a film-appreciation program he took as a night class, and the few things he told me about it made me not want to see it. But here in Year 11, there's finally time to get around to all the films I never wanted to see, in addition to seeing all the films I do want to see. Really, I'll watch just about anything in the name of clearing it off the list, that's my saving grace, even if I watch a terrible film, I can console myself by saying, "Well, it's off the list now, I can stop wondering if that was a bad film because that's now confirmed, and I never need to worry about it again." That's not really another time-saver, because I'll never get back the time I spent watching this confusing mess, but I take consolation where I can find it.
But I can't really explore WHY this film is bad without exposing some details, so I'm issuing a rare SPOILER ALERT - if you want to skip this review, I'll understand. Or go and watch it now if you don't want me to blow the details about the elements of this film which don't quite add up right.
The lead character breaks the fourth wall quite a bit at the beginning of the film, to say things like, "Wait, I'm a bad storyteller, because I forgot to tell you about this bit..." or "Let's back up a bit and look at how this character found her way to L.A." Which seems innovative at first, because this was released pre-"Deadpool" but then you may realize it's being done here just to cover up bad storytelling, because the writer didn't have another way to justify skipping around the timeline, but here's the problem - having a narrator admit that he's a bad storyteller doesn't make up for the fact that the story is being told badly. If you're going to take the time to acknowledge the problem, why not go the extra mile and FIX the problem by finding a better way to tell the story that doesn't need all the apologizing?
It's just as lazy to call a character "gay Perry" because that's the fastest way to tell us something about him - why bother with exposition, or give the audience clues so that we figure out this little bit of information about him? Nah, that takes too long. But the shorthand also feels exploitative, because there's no "straight Perry" in the film, so people wouldn't need to call him or think of him as "gay Perry", would they? Like, maybe if you had two friends named Steve and one was gay, you might THINK of him as "gay Steve" but you wouldn't make that his nickname, not in 2018, anyway. Maybe things were different back in 2005, but I don't think so. Look, times change, I get that - once upon a time people wouldn't even discuss someone's sexual preference in polite company, even if everyone knew about it. Progress was obviously made in the 1970's and 1980's, but I doubt that Perry would want to be pigeon-holed and wear his preference like that, as part of his name. Who knows, maybe he was very proud of it and liked that nickname? It was L.A., after all.
(These days, of course, it's all different - if you're a straight white male, for example, you have to put something in your profile about how you're not transphobic or how you're cis-male but still queer-positive, or you risk being out of step with the times. And God help you if you express a preference for one race over another, or fail to be body-positive in your ISOs.).
In an incredible coincidence, Harry, the lead character, encounters a woman at a party that he knew very well in high school - and he was always in the "friend zone" with her, while she slept with nearly everyone else. But if she was so important to his life back then, why didn't he recognize her right away? She can't look THAT different from how she looked in high school, and there can't be that many women named "Harmony" in the world - why did it take so long of a conversation before they recognized each other? There are probably a dozen ways to get two characters together better than this - of course, it's too easy for them to recognize each other on sight, but this goes too far in the other direction.
And then once Harry and Harmony get together, the events keep conspiring to pull them apart. Everything feels like someone was over-compensating for making things too simple, both on the small things and on the big picture. Given all the pieces of the puzzle, from the missing heiress to the dead girl, the car in the lake and the planted evidence, the story that Harry and Gay Perry come up with to explain everything is the ultimate example of bending the plot over backwards and sideways to make it fit. I'm just not buying it.
NITPICK POINT: There's no way that slamming a door on someone's hand can slice off a finger, not like that. The door would mash a finger, bruise it, maybe even flatten it beyond recognition, but it could not possibly create a clean slice, like, say, a table saw would. And even if it could, which it can't, how did the door damage only one finger and not the other ones on his hand? Was he pointing his ring finger at her when she slammed the door? Because that's not a thing. What was the point of losing the finger, only to have it re-attached? And then what was the point of getting it re-attached only to lose it again? What's the point of anything here? I guess it's symbolic of how nothing in this film seemed connected to anything else? And then his finger gets re-attached in a matter of, what, a couple hours? Like that's just a thing they do in the E.R. on an out-patient basis? Sorry, medical fail.
NITPICK POINT #2: The lead character is on painkillers and is passed out in the back-seat of a car. Another character gets in the car and drives to another location, but fails to notice him in the back seat, therefore driving him as needed to the next important site in the investigation. And the driver never sees him in the back seat? Never checks the rear-view mirror during the drive? Never hears him breathing or snoring while he's passed out? Never feels his weight shift during a tight turn? Give me a freakin' break.
NITPICK POINT #3: I can't quite follow the logic here, because somehow from the fact that a dead girl wasn't wearing underwear, they determined that she'd been in a mental hospital. Which doesn't make any sense, because there are many other reasons why someone wouldn't be wearing underwear, right? While I'm at it, NITPICK POINT #4 is the mental hospital itself, which is a private institution owned by a retired actor. How is that a thing? Can anyone name one former actor that owns a mental hospital? That makes zero sense.
NITPICK POINT #5: The big climax of the action scene, with the casket falling out of the van, hanging off the side of the overpass, and then everything that comes after that? It's worse than Ethan Hunt hanging off the side of a mountain, trying desperately to rappel up to the detonator on the ledge. It's like five unlikely events happening in sequence, and then five more on top of that.
The best thing I can say about this film is that it somehow led to Robert Downey Jr. being cast as Tony Stark in "Iron Man". In the comic books, Tony Stark was often depicted in the 1970's as the smart, rich, handsome playboy but then when the writers explored his alcoholism, it was a whole new take on the character. Suddenly he had personal problems that needed to be overcome in order to be a super-hero, and this led to new storytelling possibilities, like the fact that maybe he replaced the addiction to alcohol with an addiction to tech, plus he would always be nervous about his addiction, and afraid of slipping back into his old habits after getting clean. Harry here is often seen drinking or on painkillers, and always seems to be trying to clear his head, plus always stressed out by one situation or another - plus of course the actor had his own personal addictions to overcome, so he ended up being the perfect choice for Tony Stark. And the director of this film also directed "Iron Man 3", the one where Tony was on the run, and the most stressed-out and anxious due to the threat of alien invasion.
That's when I realized that "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is nothing but a giant stress dream. Stress of being wanted by the police, the stress of pretending to be something that you're not, the stress of encountering your high-school crush, the stress of then ruining the meeting with said crush, the stress of being framed for murder, the stress of being held hostage, etc. etc. I know that when I fell asleep right after watching it, I had a series of stress dreams - I was at a party, my family was there, for some reason I had another apartment that I didn't want anyone to know about, my ex-wife was calling me on the phone, I had to go outside and buy something only I couldn't find it, and then the Mexican army invaded. (I think "The Alamo" was on TV when I woke up, that could have had a lot to do with how the dream ended.)
Also starring Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Val Kilmer (last seen in "Wonderland"), Stephanie Pearson, Corbin Bernsen (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), Rockmond Dunbar, Dash Mihok (last seen in "Silver Linings Playbook"), Shannyn Sossamon (last seen in "The Holiday"), Angela Lindvall, Ali Hillis (last seen in "Must Love Dogs"), Larry Miller (last seen in "Mother's Day"), Indio Falconer Downey, Ariel Winter (last heard in "Mr. Peabody & Sherman"), Harrison Young, with cameos from Richard Grieco (last seen in "22 Jump Street") and the voice of Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp").
RATING: 3 out of 10 Johnny Gossamer novels
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