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The premise is not original, the acting is good but not exactly to write home about and technically it's not a great accomplishment. But is 'Watching The Detectives' entertaining? Definitely. Lucy Liu fits the role of the play-in-the-field perfectly (her role reminded me of her character in Lucky Number Slevin) and Cillian Murphy really proved to be a surprise in a comedy role. I've only seen his really intense, sometimes scary roles and couldn't believe he was going to be somewhat enjoyable as a light character but I was very wrong.
The antics they get in to are fairly original and there even were several laugh-out-loud moments, for instance when the waiter is just a little too comfortable with spraying a glass of water on a woman he doesn't know on the request of a guy he doesn't know. :-). And when Lucy starts talking about her weirdo ex-boyfriends me and my friends were in stitches. The following scenes are quite amusing too, as Cillian gets paranoid over every bald guy he sees.
I mentioned some of the more original stuff above but there's also formulaic stuff present. WTD is never intended to be a film we can take something away from, it's harmless escapism that ironically enough deals with escapism a lot of the time :-). The relatively negative connotations concerning movie freaks certainly left a bad taste in my mouth after viewing, after all isn't that the target audience of these small films? I somehow feel they didn't find the right balance between respecting film and commenting on over-obsessive film freaks. Also the fact that they can't differ people who watch sci-fi, anime and stuff from the people who enjoy quality movies (like the mentioned Seventh Seal or Casino). Seems a bit ignorant.
In the end, DTW is better than a lot of comedies but it never goes deep, we (us guys) just fall in love with Lucy Liu all over again and that's never a bad way to spend ninety minutes.
7.5/10
score 8/10
Panterken 1 March 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1831277/ |
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14-3-2021 00:06:05