The Singing Detective
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Movie Reviews of The Singing Detective
Movie Review: Classic Robert Downey Jr.
Summary: 5 Stars
I think your appreciation of this movie may rise or fall depending on how endearing you find Downey's schtick, and whether you can abide musicals. I adore him, even dressed as a human pizza, and love musicals. I also adore Mel Gibson, who throws off his glamour to play a Downey's quirky shrink. The supporting cast is very excellently filled out with great actors, and we get to see almost all of them break into song! Yes, including Mel. The lipsyncing is not good, but I think that must be intentional, and managed to look past it.So - Downey plays a dual role as a disfigured and helpless novelist and the hero of his novel, the titular singing detective. He doesn't sing while detecting, he does both mostly separately. We flash in and out of Downey's reality in a hospital and his hallucinations or his mental reliving of his novel, and occasional flashbacks to his youth. The detective stuff is great hard-boiled, sometimes well-worn, but often funny material. The humor is often wordy - puns and irony - and you want to catch every line. The closest comparison I can think of is Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir, kind of spoofy but respectful of the noir detective. It's a pity, but Downey's dialog is sometimes a bit unclear. There's also humor of absurdity - the songs, the hallucinations, the juxtapositions between worlds.
And there's stuff that's not so funny: sex, violence, and sexual violence. Your kids should not be watching this!
Movie Review: Worth the drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I just got back from seeing The Singing Detective. I had to drive 152 miles to see it in a tiny little theater in Nevada City, California. I have to admit that I am very much a Robert Downey Jr. fan so I was highly motivated. I was captivated with the story. I was prepared for it to jump from reality to fantasy so everything seemed to fall into place. The acting was great ; the cinematography , superb. I just wish this film had a wider release. It was well worth the drive!Movie Review: Entertaining on its own merits
Summary: 4 Stars
I've never seen the original BBC series by Dennis Potter, which I think helps me to see this version in a more objective light. My understanding is that this is not just a "shortened" version of the BBC series but rather a complete reworking by Potter himself (based on the script he wrote) which does in fact happen to be shorter in length. It seems the action has been moved--again, by Potter himself--from England in the 1940's to America in the 1950's, with songs appropriate to that time and place used to explore the motivations of the characters. Having listened to the director's commentary, it seems as though the director of this version was very concerned about staying faithful to Potter's words and intentions.
That said, I think the film can be enjoyed even by those who know nothing about its background. Yes, it's a little offbeat--a dark comedy in which the past and the present, as well as fictional worlds, collide in the mind of one physically and emotionally sick man, complete with stylized musical numbers that may seem to come from nowhere. But I thought it was quite good once I got into its spirit--funny, sad, surprising, moving, and ultimately upbeat without ever feeling forced, manipulative, or weird merely for the sake of being weird. I thought all the actors were excellent; Robert Downey Jr. as the vitriolic writer at the center of the action and Mel Gibson as the awkward therapist who tries to help him stand out especially.
I wrote this review to give people a different perspective from the single previous review, in which this version was compared to the original BBC series and came out the worse. I feel that this version is not simply a "remake" or an "update"--implying it's a cheap knock-off made to squeeze more money out of the franchise--but rather a new examination of the story by the same author in a different time and place. I think people who give it a chance without constantly comparing it to the older version will be pleasantly surprised.
Movie Review: Touching AND Funny At The Same Time!
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Singing Detective" may not be an obvious pick for "Best Picture of 2003" honors, but it gets my vote for underground hit of the year. Hospitalized as the result of a rare skin disorder, novelist Dan Dark (Robert Downey, Jr.) drifts into a subconscious world of fantasy lore, and imagines himself as a gangster to escape the harsh reality of his existing condition. What follows is a drama/comedy/musical that'll have a dual effect on "The Singing Detective"'s audience - in that it will have you both laughing and crying at the same time. To help the proceedings along, a semi-all-star cast is on hand, which includes Alfre Woodard (as a hospital chief of staff) and Mel Gibson (as Dan Dark's psychoanalyst). To top it all off, the film's soundtrack, featuring 1950s and '60s tunes helps paint a spectacular picture, in that it provides an interesting backdrop for the storyline. If there's one minor flaw to this picture, it would have to be the makeup job of Robert Downey, Jr.. In far-away shots, it looks perfect and masterful - but in closeups, it pretty much looks "paint-by-numbers" (nonetheless being unappetizing when one is consuming refreshments during the movie!). Nevertheless, "The Singing Detective", in terms of layout and cinematic preciseness, has Cannes Film Festival subleties craftfully etched inside its durable craftsmanship. Definitely worthy of at least two views at your local theater, and for your video library in the very near future!Movie Review: It's a Freudian Mystery Musical!
Summary: 3 Stars
A disfiguring skin disease confines novelist Dan Dark (Robert Downey, Jr.) to a hospital bed for months. Embittered by his condition and paranoid about his wife's (Robin Wright Penn) fidelity, Dan hallucinates the plot of his first novel "The Singing Detective", replacing the characters in the novel with real people from his life. The resident psychiatrist (Mel Gibson) believes that the noir detective novel about a 1950's era "gumshoe that warbles" holds clues to Dan's paranoia and self-loathing. How much of the detective story reflects Dan's real life and how the two have become intermingled in his hallucinations remain to be seen as Dan slowly recovers."The Singing Detective" is adapted from the 1986 television miniseries of the same name, written by Dennis Potter, who also wrote the film's screenplay. The film defies categorization, and it may take the prize for the most genre-crossing film that I have seen. "The Singing Detective" is a mystery within a mystery, a comedy, a psychological drama, and a musical. Yes, a musical. The plot is nonlinear, jumping back and forth between Dan's ordeal in the hospital, his memories, and his hallucinations of various times and places. It takes the audience the better part of the film to figure out how it all fits together. In this way, the film is like a jigsaw puzzle of Dan's mind...a mystery to be unraveled. The other mystery is the one Dan's fictional detective is simultaneously trying to solve. I'm not sure why Dennis Potter made the detective a singer. This introduces a musical element into a story that is already so overcrowded that it can be difficult to decipher. "The Singing Detective" is the most overtly Freudian movie I've seen in ages. In fact, if there is any film to which it can be compared, it reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound". Both films alternate between reality and stylized Freudian hallucinations. In both films, a man's past and his salvation, of which even he is not aware, are to be found in his hallucinations and the mystery solved with the help of a sympathetic psychoanalyst. Unlike "Spellbound", "The Singing Detective" could actually be called overbearing in its style, though.
"The Singing Detective" is genuinely hilarious at times. It elicited more than a few loud guffaws from the audience in my local theater. It's also to be commended for being clever and surprising. And Robert Downey, Jr. gives an impressive performance, as always. But the film's first act unfortunately does nothing to draw the audience into the story. On the contrary, it introduces some unattractive characters in a confusing manner and does more to put the audience off than anything. This may be attributable to the fact that "The Singing Detective" contains too much material for a film of this length, so it is obligated to dive right in instead of easing the audience into its frenetic mix of fantasy and reality. But if you get past the first half hour or so, it improves. Another element that is likely to alienate some of the film's audience is Dan's misogynistic tirades, which wore on my patience after a while. So I'm giving "The Singing Detective" a marginal recommendation. If you don't like non-linear methods of story-telling, garish imagery, and Freudian inferences, you won't like this film. If, on the other hand, you like (truly funny) cynical, vindictive, occasionally obscene humor and the aforementioned characteristics appeal to you, you might want to give "The Singing Detective" a try.
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