Watching the Detectives

Paul Soter, congratulations, because not only are you a member of a comedy troupe that has made multiple hilarious movies that have already become cult classics, but you have written and directed a movie that made me feel like a movie hasn't been able to in quite a long time. It's a fleeting feeling that makes colors look slightly brighter, allows you to tune out the person that just cut you off, and makes apples taste juicier and crunchier than ever. It's a feeling called happiness. Pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less. That's not to say that I'm some dark, depressed dude who rarely sees the light of day. It's just that this movie did everything right.

Watching the Detectives is a romantic comedy at heart. However, I hate to call it that because that creates all sorts of stigmas for all sorts of people. It's about a guy named Neil (Cillian Murphy) who works at a floundering movie-rental store, and mysterious a girl named Violet (Lucy Liu) who turns his world upside down. Sound generic, cliché even? Indeed it does, and for Watching the Detectives to still come out nearly flawless is a true feat.

The romance is adequately covered; Lucy Liu's character is the kind of girl that every man would like to meet: bubbly but not annoyingly so, spontaneous and adventurous, enigmatic, cute, and charming. And Cillian Murphy's character, who is predictable but not quite boring, eats it up like a death-row inmate sitting in front of his last meal. They get into all sorts of escapades together like a modern day, sexy Bonnie and Clyde. While you're watching you actually can feel the connection quickly forming between the two. The comedy is fantastic, too. The best part about it is that it strays so far away from what is currently considered "comedy": there is no BS slapstick, no lame one-liners, no irrelevant references to pop culture. It relies on situation irony and mundane actions and events that you won't know are funny until you're actually laughing at them, like when Neil is running the bases at his softball game, bawling like a little girl.

The real beef of this movie lies in analysis. The entire movie analyzes different aspects of life, love, and chance. The characters actually have intelligent, relatively deep conversations about these things. And I know some people will be immediately turned off by that notion, but Soter manages never to make it sound preachy or uninteresting. There's that old saying, "Opposites attract." That's great and true, but this movie looks at it more as "opposites are never as opposite as you think they are." It's hard to sum it up. Watch and you'll understand.

Paul Soter has crafted a winner of a movie. I was engaged the entire time, I never heard a single line that didn't work, and everything that happened in the movie felt natural and right. Soter's inspiration comes from films of the past, an element that is featured largely in the movie. Perhaps it's this interest in cinema of the past that allows him to write from a different perspective than other current filmmakers. That and the fact that he's inherently very funny. In fact, if you've seen him in any of his other movies, especially Super Troopers, chances are you'll be able to extract any line that anybody in the movie says and mentally hear and see it coming straight from him. Watching the Detectives is oozing with personality, and every character is consistent. It's a fun movie that manages to never hit up the cheese dip, and it will leave you satisfied and happy. It even has a perfect emotional climax, a cathartic scene that fully and adequately explains Liu's character's motives, but not in a lame or overtly obvious way. Plus, I always disliked Lucy Liu, but this movie has totally won me over for her. To wrap up a tangled and messy conclusion, it's almost like a smart Garden State for adults, not embarrassingly hip, confused teenagers.

7/7