This was another of those “black comedies”. Notice the words in quotes, as black comedies are rarely funny. Will this one buck the trend? We shall see. This one starred Robert Downey, Jr, a very good actor, and I like many of his movies. Here he played Harry, a small-time criminal who crashed an audition during his flight from a crime gone wrong and inexplicably got the chance for a screen test in Hollywood. Seriously? The incredulous plot twists continued throughout this flick. To make matters worse, right off the bat, Downey played a secondary role as narrator. I hate narrators in movies – strike one!
At a Hollywood party, we met Val Kilmer as “gay” Perry, a private detective tasked with giving Harry on-the-job training. In another ridiculous coincidence, at the same party, Harry met his childhood sweetheart Harmony, played by Michelle Monaghan. We also met Corbin Bernsen as Harlan, a retired actor.
During scenery of a Los Angeles highway, the film suddenly froze on a staggered frame and Downey started narrating again. They reprised this nonsense several times. Strike two! At a remote cabin stake out, Perry and Harry observed a car flying into a lake – they went to investigate, and again inexplicably, believed someone to be in the trunk. Perry shot the trunk open (under water – come on, man!), where they pulled out a dead woman. Seeing that she had a fatal gunshot wound, they somehow believed the shot fired to open the trunk also killed her. Seriously? This film was just one ridiculous scene after another.
Speaking of idiotic happenings, Harry later found the same corpse in his hotel bedroom, then went to see Harmony, who then slammed the door in his face and severed Harry’s finger. After a visit to the hospital to get it reattached, it was merely bandaged – no splint or cast. Oh and remember this point, because later in the movie, Harry’s finger fell off and a dog ate it. Wow, never saw that happen in a movie before…
Downey, who usually refrains from hammy performances, broke that trend in two scenes – being high on Demerol after the hospital finger re-attachment, and again at the end. But he never went full hog. He followed his own advice as Kirk Lazarus: “You went full ham, man. Never go full ham!”
By this point in the movie, I realized that this “black comedy” was not much of a comedy. A few chuckles here and there, but most of the “jokes” fall flat. It was also a confusing mess. With about twenty minutes left in the movie, Harry said, “What is going on here?” Good question – I have NO FUCKING IDEA!
Suffice to say, this movie ping-ponged through several more impossibly improbable scenes, finally reaching a sadly silly conclusion. The biggest laugh in the entire movie was at the end when all the characters that had died came back. And then in the very last scene, I saw that HARRY’S FUCKING FINGER IS BACK!!
I ran out of strikes for this one, and give it three “The script reads me”s out of twelve.