Review

Review Date: 13-November-05
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)

I never had a brother. I always kinda wanted one, though, since it seems like a brother could provide untold opportunities for romping and ribaldry, faithfulness and unsentimental affection. I'm telling you this because "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is hands-down the most puerile movie I have ever seen, or at least the most puerile movie I have ever seen that doesn't suck. If I didn't know otherwise, I would profess astonishment that writer/director Shane Black was able to get financing and produce such a visually polished movie at 14 years of age. Yet this boyish quality is precisely what elicits my fraternal indulgence for this film. I just can't knock how much fun it represents for those involved.

In the world of "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" (modern-day Los Angeles), the hero Harry (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a lovable lug of a thief and charlatan, and every female is a rail-thin babe who offers a constant display of thigh or nipple. Harry's high school flame, played by Michelle Monaghan, is a midwestern honey who came to the city seeking fame and found nothing. (Since a babe can't be over 30, it makes perfect sense that Downey, who's 40, could have gone to school with Monaghan, who's 29 but looks 22.) The old friends reconnect at a swanky party where Harry is also introduced to a successful detective (Val Kilmer), who happens to be homosexual. Of course, the mere fact that some guys are gay is intrinsically hilarious, so the movie milks that little plot point for all it's worth.

In giddy fashion, but not without some cool gore and violence, Black takes his star trio on a wild adventure that mimics pulp fiction and involves a murder, a frame-up, a suicide, and a prominent Hollywood filmmaker. It's awash in self-conscious hipness (as if Black already regarded the movie as a classic and was repeating the lines to himself), but the actors have a ball barking rapid-fire dialogue into their cell phones about boners and panties and the correct use of adverbs. (And queers! Tee hee.) Foremost among them is Downey, who can take credit for making the mayhem pop as much as it does. He's effortlessly cute and rumpled and foolish — rather like the brother I never had, who would probably love this film.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.