The Singing Dic

The Singing Detective, apparently theres a BBC miniseries that this movie was based on.

Ever heard of the movie or the miniseries? Probably not.

Hey! Did you know Robert Downey Jr, Mel Gibson, Adrien Brody, and Katie Holmes were in a musical of sorts together? Yep, that's this. Shockingly enough, not many people remember it.

Alright, here's the skinny-

"Suffering from the skin disease psoriasis and a crippling arthritis, detective novelist Dan Dark is in such pain in a hospital that he begins to delve into fantasy, resulting in several story-lines told simultaneously:"

Thanks Wikipedia!

Now here's the problem, this movie is one of those "let's be weird and have flashbacks and burst into song and not really make sense until the end"....like.... umm..... Happiness of the Katakuris. This sort of design works only sometimes, and usually it's destined to become a cult following abstract movie.

That's the same deal with this. Frankly, I thought the overall design and storyboard of the movie was brilliant, Downey can't sing but his character can...well... the character in his story that he replaces with himself can. So you have scenes where Downey is "singing" but it's obviously been dubbed, no matter it simply adds to the elements.

This is just a strange movie, but I've always been a fan of both film noir and this sort of abstract musical-esque clip show? Yeah, that.

The movie is better viewed in its entirety, because, as you watch it you start to piece things together, start to piece the plot together. You quickly discover things that the movie then tells you at about the same time.

The reviewers gave it horrible ratings, but that's almost to be expected since it appeals to a crowd of oh, I dunno, like 5. If you're familiar with the Happiness movie I've previously mentioned, or something like Death to Smoochy, then this movie is right up your alley. If you want something strange, and I mean strange, but a decent movie for a saturday afternoon, then this might be it, as long as you like detective stories. If you don't like the strange and abstract, and don't care for dic stories, just stay away, most everyone else did.