The Singing Detective
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Movie Reviews of The Singing Detective
Movie Review: Robert Downey Jr., is The Singing Detective
Summary: 4 Stars
After having watched the original TSD six-part mini-series and read some of the bewildered comments about this film when it first screened at the Sundance Film Festival, I prepared to see this movie with some trepidation. Fortunately for us, TSD was included last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, where it played to a packed house of over 1200 people. Director, Keith Gordon was in attendance, along with the film's star, Robert Downey Jr. (Dan Dark) and Katie Holmes (nurse Mills.) Five minutes into it, I knew this was something special and unique as I found myself laughing, clapping out loud and even shedding a few tears. The film was everything Gordon described it to be and then some. (And so was the original.) The 2003 DVD of The Singing Detective is a revised and sharper version of the mini-series and rewritten by Dennis Potter himself. It's a comedy, film noir, musical, intense microscopic character study and surrealistic detective story, with the film's hero slipping in and out of hallucinatory daydreams, as he reluctantly wrestles demons from his childhood. This is accomplished with the aid of one Columbo type, Dr. Gibbon, terrifically underplayed by Mel Gibson. The beauty of the journey is in observing how Dark gets from A to D, while trying to distinguish his angels from the devil. The emotionally and physically ill Dan Dark, unwittingly achieves this task while imagining himself as the tougher, fearless, ladie's man hero of his detective novels. To boot, this detective likes to croon a tune in the after hours clubs.
After having watched the film at the Toronto festival and then seeing it again this weekend by renting the DVD, I have to confess this is one of the most fascinating and brilliant films to grace movie screens. It wasn't just an apparition. The critics who didn't care for it, most likely didn't understand it, as it is a challenging film. Even Roger Ebert admitted he had to give it a second look in order to assimilate what he'd initially seen and liked it. (If you're excpecting Chicago, this film is not for you.) In spite of the fact that it wasn't completely understood, almost all critics were unanimous in their praise of Downey. He is superb. Forget Chaplin. (The biopic in which Downey excelled and was nomimated for an Oscar.) This is his complete virtuoso performance and it's worth renting the film just to observe his work alone. No wonder Sean Penn verbally acknowledged Downey in his short list of actors who were not nominated for an Oscar this year, when he received his own statue for the award. With an excellent supporting cast, this DVD is definitely worth the rent, but a few words of caution. Watch it twice and you'll be delighted and amazed by what you might have missed the first time around. In the words of Dan Dark. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Movie Review: Robert Downey Jr., is The Singing Detective
Summary: 4 Stars
After having watched the original TSD six-part mini-series and read some of the bewildered comments about this film when it first screened at the Sundance Film Festival, I prepared to see this movie with some trepidation. Fortunately for us, TSD was included last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, where it played to a packed house of over 1200 people. Director, Keith Gordon was in attendance, along with the film's star, Robert Downey Jr. (Dan Dark) and Katie Holmes (nurse Mills.) Five minutes into it, I knew this was something special and unique as I found myself laughing, clapping out loud and even shedding a few tears. The film was everything Gordon described it to be and then some. (And so was the original.) The 2003 DVD of The Singing Detective is a revised and sharper version of the mini-series and rewritten by Dennis Potter himself. It's a comedy, film noir, musical, intense microscopic character study and surrealistic detective story, with the film's hero slipping in and out of hallucinatory daydreams, as he reluctantly wrestles demons from his childhood. This is accomplished with the aid of one Columbo type, Dr. Gibbon, terrifically underplayed by Mel Gibson. The beauty of the journey is in observing how Dark gets from A to D, while trying to distinguish his angels from the devil. The emotionally and physically ill Dan Dark, unwittingly achieves this task while imagining himself as the tougher, fearless, ladie's man hero of his detective novels. To boot, this detective likes to croon a tune in the after hours clubs.
After having watched the film at the Toronto festival and then seen it again this weekend by renting the DVD, I have to confess this is one of the most fascinating and brilliant films to grace movie screens. It wasn't just an apparition. The critics who didn't care for it, most likely didn't understand it, as it is a challenging film. Even Roger Ebert admitted he had to give it a second look in order to assimilate what he'd initially seen and liked it. (If you're excpecting Chicago, this film is not for you.) In spite of the fact that it wasn't completely understood, almost all critics were unanimous in their praise of Downey. He is superb. Forget Chaplin. (The biopic in which Downey excelled and was nomimated for an Oscar.) This is his complete virtuoso performance and it's worth renting the film just to observe his work alone. No wonder Sean Penn verbally acknowledged Downey in his short list of actors who were not nominated for an Oscar this year, when he received his own statue for the award. With an excellent supporting cast, this DVD is definitely worth the rent, but a few words of caution. Watch it twice and you'll be delighted and amazed by what you might have missed the first time around. In the words of Dan Dark. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Movie Review: A Lively Nightmare
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie didn't seem to get very good reviews. After seeing it myself, I'm stumped. It's malevolent and weird, but it certainly isn't dull; it's surreal, but not to the point that you can't tell what's going on. Plus, the acting is great and the concept disturbing. As unpleasant as parts of it were, I'm going to watch it again.
Part of the problem is, this movie is a remake of a much better TV series. The TV series ran 7 1/2 hours, and this movie has *somehow* been cut down to 2. Okay. You can guess what happened. In an attempt to trim off fat, they whittled the plot down to an incomplete skeleton. But it all still makes sense, and I enjoyed doing my own job of guessing and reconstruction.
I think the other problem is that people see the title, and expect a fun, flashy crime story. This movie is not what you'd call "fun", unless you love a good Lynch or Cronenberg marathon.
Also, if you want to ogle Robert Downey Jr.--and that's a good and admirable pastime, I applaud it--this movie will bother you. He spends most of it looking like he's in the last stages of radiation poisoning. His dreamworld alter-ego is handsome, but played as a flat-voiced, shiny-eyed Invasion Of The Body Snatchers doppelganger. I had to remind myself that it was only an actor in makeup; the illness portrayed here is horrible seems very real. Downey is ferociously good, filled with rage and scorching the paint off the walls, and it's disturbing.
Yeah, Downey is great in this; he goes from a sick, vicious, venomous invalid in the first half to a slightly-less sick, more charming, more frightening nut case in the second half. More frightening, as he becomes less insane? Absolutely. In the first half of the movie, you know what he will do--he's going to break every bone in your body, if he could just get past the pain enough to lever himself out of bed. In the second half, he is a gentler lunatic, still lashing out, but also experiencing moments of dotty clarity; he is picking up pieces of his own broken mind and saying "Oooh. Look at that." Watching the expressions flicker across Downey's face is amazing. There is a moment when his wife says something to him, something innocent which still brings up a flare of insanity. You see a blaze of fear and paranoia, an "Uh oh, what am I doing?" moment, then a forced calm as he reminds himself that he shouldn't follow that impulse.
Anyway, enough. I highly recommend this movie if you like good acting, if you like being disturbed, if you want some Twilight Zone to chew on. It is much more unnerving than some horror films I've seen, and the ending is happy in a horrifying way. Go ahead, it's great, you just have to like this sort of thing and be in the mood for it. Watch it on Halloween, I dare you.
Movie Review: Very Unusual!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
The Singing Detective is a frantic, high energy and very weird cinematic experience. Dennis Potter wrote the screenplay for the film in 1992, two years before his death, based on his own 1986 BBC miniseries of the same name. Potter, who suffered from the same skin disease as our main character, very much wanted a feature film version of his miniseries, which may or may not closely resemble his own life. The script kicked around Hollywood for nearly a decade before director Keith Gordon, star Robert Downey Jr., and producer Mel Gibson became attached. The result is a fine example of entertainment - an eclectic mix of drama, film noir, and comedy, with plenty of fantasy musical numbers thrown in for good measure.
Robert Downey Jr. gives a truly amazing performance as Dan Dark, a pulp fiction author who is flat on his back in a hospital, suffering from a debilitating skin condition. If anything, his mind is in worse shape than his body. As he slowly recovers, he imagines scenes from his first novel, The Singing Detective, with himself as the lead character. His ex-wife, Nicola (a beautiful Robin Wright Penn), visits him at the hospital and plays a key part in his frantic imagination. He also has dreams and visions of his childhood, where he sees his mother (Carla Gugino) have an affair with his father's partner, Mark Binney (Jeremy Northam). His psychotherapist, Dr. Gibbon (an almost unrecognizable Mel Gibson), believes that things he experienced as a child have led to his sudden outbursts of violent temper. It is Gibbon's job to heal Dan's mind in tandem with his recovering body. Katie Holmes, as a nurse caring for Dan, Adrien Brody, and Jon Polito, as a pair of hoods, round out the excellent cast.
The Singing Detective is definitely different from any film to come out in recent years. It has a bizarre David Lynch like quality and a refreshing weirdness. The script is jumbled and moves frantically from one thing to another, but its gorgeous style, energetic performances, and fantastic musical numbers keep it entertaining. I wish it were a bit longer so I could understand the story a little better, but seeing this has made me desperate to seek out the original miniseries, which I have yet to see. The pacing can sometimes become tedious, and the concept of the film can be challenging for those unfamiliar with the source material, but ultimately "The Singing Detective" is a visual delight and an acting tour-de-force. It is one of the most unique films I have seen in years and I'm sure glad I saw it. Not recommended for everyone, but worth a try.
Movie Review: Seen on its own merits . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
Few if any reviewers here indicate having watched Keith Gordon's director's commentary on this DVD. I think it would alter some of their judgements. As Gordon explains, the film script was in fact written by Dennis Potter, whose original "Singing Detective" ran as a much longer miniseries on British TV 20 years ago, and the changes to an American setting with 1950s American pop music were really Potter's own ideas. If the transition to feature film format loses something in the translation, it is in part due to his reconceptualization of his original creation.
As the commentary reveals, much of the inventiveness in this new version is not apparent in a single viewing. While it may seem to truncate and over-simplify the lengthier TV version, there is still complexity and ambiguity enough to entertain and engage a thoughtful viewer appreciative of good screenwriting and wonderful performances. Robert Downey's dual role as the embittered writer and the Bogart-style detective of the title reveal the mercurial range of this amazing actor, and his scenes with Robin Wright Penn, who plays his wife, are a brilliant portrayal of two people equally matched in their struggle to preserve a relationship and, at the same time, the integrity of themselves as individuals.
Strong cast. Interesting contrast of visual styles. Rated R for a wide range of disturbingly graphic and lurid visual imagery, including the main character's horrific skin condition. Granted, this "Singing Detective" is no substitute for the original, but seen on its own merits, it still stands up well on its own.