‘Poolman’ Review: Chris Pine’s Noir-Drenched L.A. Comedy Is a Shrill Misfire – Hollywood Reporter

The pool dude abides.

Someplace early on within the inventive course of, Chris Pine and his writing-producing accomplice Ian Gotler clearly thought they have been on to one thing impressed with Poolman, which seemingly got down to reimagine Chinatown as a Coen Bros. film, with Pine enjoying the title character — a long-haired, scraggly-bearded Zen grasp of a pool cleaner turned bumbling sleuth. However the finish outcome, additionally serving as Pine’s directorial debut, goes tonally off the rails from the beginning and proceeds to hit backside with excruciating momentum, dragging a recreation ensemble, together with Annette Bening, Danny DeVito and Jennifer Jason Leigh, down for the rely.

Given its world premiere at Toronto, the place it arrived searching for distribution, this TIFF stiff will probably have a troublesome time discovering a house based mostly on the tepid response from the typically effusive pageant viewers.

Plying his craft on the kidney-shaped swimming pool in entrance of the Tahitian Tiki, a motel-turned-apartment complicated, Pine’s Darren Barrenman positively makes a press release along with his salmon-colored, 70s-length bathing trunks and wide-eyed dreamer demeanor. When he’s not checking pH ranges choreographed to the soothing strains of “Flower Duet” from Lakme enjoying on his moveable CD participant, DB will be present in his trailer tapping out every day affirmations on his guide typewriter, addressed to his favourite civic crusader, Erin Brockovich.

Decided to make his beloved L.A. a greater place, particularly the place bus schedules are involved, he additionally routinely crashes metropolis council conferences accompanied by Tahitian Tiki owner-residents Jack (DeVito) and Diane (Bening), an out-of-work director and actress turned therapist, respectively. Additionally with them is his girlfriend, complicated supervisor Susan (Leigh), who needs to open her personal pilates studio.

Intrigue arrives within the sultry type of June Del Rey (DeWanda Clever), a stylishly appointed femme fatale, equal components Faye Dunaway and Jessica Rabbit, drawing Darren into an online of intrigue and corruption as he uncovers a plot by robust man Van Patterson (Ray Clever) to siphon off the town’s treasured water provide for his bold almond-growing operation.

Trapped someplace beneath the overmodulated freneticism is the kernel of one thing workable, particularly in regard to the Clever character, whose co-opting of the area’s aquifer would seem like based mostly on the controversial practices of The Fantastic Firm, whose aggressive Central Valley agricultural methods have up to now landed them in sizzling water. Nevertheless it will get misplaced within the shrill goofiness of an idea, which, at greatest, feels just like the kind of half-baked SNL character sketches that are inclined to get buried within the slot following the second musical efficiency.

Whereas Pine is undeniably a charismatic actor, that likability can solely generate a lot viewers good will in a manufacturing overstuffed with cartoonish caricatures missing any kind of deeper connective tissue. The notable exception right here is Stephen Tobolowsky within the position of a rabbi moonlighting as a metropolis council president who leads a secret life enjoying Blanche in a Golden Ladies drag cabaret staging, miraculously managing to wring pathos out of the wacky character.

Shot on 35mm movie (although, attributable to technical points, digitally projected at its premiere), the movie has a throwback, Lengthy Goodbye vibe that extends to the Southern California places, together with the Santa Anita Racetrack, the Biltmore Lodge, Clifton’s Cafeteria, the Pasadena Mansion and, naturally, Chinatown. Nevertheless it’s all in the end obscured by the insufferably tedious goings-on cramming the foreground, even because the filmmakers keep their work is meant as “a love letter to Los Angeles.”

The place’s the Return to Sender stamp if you want it?