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Movie Reviews

THE SINGING DETECTIVE

Release Date:
Thursday, July 08, 2004

Palace Nova EastEnd, Adelaide | Greater Union Cinemas | Hoyts Cinemas

When It Comes To Murder, Seduction and Betrayal, He Wrote The Book. Now He’s Living It.
Synopsis:	Based on the classic 1986 BBC TV series by Dennis Potter, THE SINGING DETECTIVE features an amazing cast with an outstanding performance by Robert Downey Jr. This psychological drama mixes disparate genres together to create a combination of a surreal rock ‘n roll musical, expressionist noir thriller and fevered character study….a work that is wildly original. Mel Gibson supports, playing a character different from any you’ve seen him portray before. THE SINGING DETECTIVE centres on novelist Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) who, while hospitalised with an extreme case of psoriasis, reworks his first book in his head. Feverish, paranoid and prone to musical outbreaks, he confuses himself with his protagonist, a detective hot on the trail of some gangster-types.

Verdict:	‘The Singing Detective’ is a very hard movie to describe if you haven’t seen the 1986 tv series of the same name. The movie opens with a close-up of Dan Dark in hospital – a close up that is very unnerving if you have never seen a classic, horrific case of psoriasis – a skin condition where the sufferer is literally covered with scaly, peeling, dry skin. Dan is not a happy patient and is basically miserable to be around. He is offensive, loud and often crass and vulgar which is hard to take although understandable to some degree given his condition. Dan has the ability to transform himself into another world in his mind to escape his condition and uses this to enter the world of a novel he has written. This is where the film rapidly changes direction – a musical number can arise from seemingly nowhere. This transfer from Dan’s reality to fantasy is very confusing and it is often hard to remember where he is. The action jumps too quickly backwards and forwards between the two, far too many times and makes it hard to focus on where the story is going, but this could just be trying to convey where Dan is really at in his mind. Sometimes it is all too confusing to be able to enjoy what could be great story. Maybe trying to condense what was an 8-10 hour tv series into a 100 minute movie was asking for too much. Mention must go though to some of the actors – Robert Downey Jr. giving a wonderful performance as Dan Dark and showing us that he really can sing. Mel Gibson puts in an almost unrecognisable eccentric performance, as Dr Gibbon, the often-underrated Robin Wright Penn as Dan’s wife, is as good and sultry as ever, as well as Katie Holmes and Jeremy Northam adding class. But are they good enough to save ‘The Singing Detective’? In this case, maybe, but this movie will really only appeal to a limited audience.

Cast:

Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright Penn, Jeremy Northam,

Director:

Keith Gordon

Writer:

Dennis Potter (screenplay)

Genre:

Drama

Rated:

MA 15+ medium level sex scenes, medium level coarse language

Runtime:

109 minutes

Other:

Reviewed by:

55/100

Christina Bruce

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