"The Kid Detective" is a funny, sad, and dark look at unrealized potential
After watching Adam Brody play a big creep in Promising Young Woman, Craig and I decided to check out another of his recent films, the Canadian murder mystery The Kid Detective. And what we expected to be a fun, frothy comedy ended up being a shockingly dark and well-crafted mystery.
The movie follows Abe Applebaum (Brody), who, as a teen, was a successful and adored kid detective who solved all sorts of mysteries, from who stole the school’s fundraising money to where an old lady’s cat turned up. But when one of his friends goes missing and he can’t solve the case, Abe’s hot streak stops, and now he’s an adult with a failing private eye business, disappointed parents, and a snarky attitude. Then a young teen asks him to help solve the murder of her boyfriend, who was brutally stabbed to death in the town’s woods.
Yes, this premise has a lot in common’s with Derrick Comedy’s 2009 movie Mystery Team. But where that movie was a full-on comedy and satire, The Kid Detective takes the set-up seriously and chooses instead to tell a story about grappling with one’s unrealized potential and the pain that comes with growing up and seeing the world with all of its flaws. There’s definitely a fair amount of comedy in the movie, mostly centred on Abe’s caustic wit and how pathetic he feels (and often is), but the film doesn’t forget that he’s investigating, you know, a kid who was murdered.
The film does a really good job of world-building, as you really get a sense of all the different kinds of people who live is this town, and what their perspectives are on it. Abe talks a lot about how the town has changed over the years, how it’s lost its sheen and innocence — but has it really, or did he just used to have more optimism about it? Canadian actor Sophie Nélisse plays the young girl who comes to Abe for help, and she’s very good, though I do wish her part had been just a little more fleshed out.
The mystery itself is really well crafted, with clues that are cleverly planted, and the solving of it feels well-earned and surprising. And the very last scene of the movie is just an excellent ending that is incredibly well-acted by Brody. His career never quite took off as we all expected after The O.C., but his work in The Kid Detective shows that he really does have some acting chops along with his boyish charm. (Can you believe Brody is 41 and still has boyish charm??)
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Kat
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