Review: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

A-

This is a movie that almost nobody has ever seen, which is really a shame. It makes me write this review with all the more urgency even though it's been out on DVD for a few months now.

This movie's director (Shane Black) apparently wrote the original Lethal Weapon screenplay way back when, so he's no stranger to the buddy cop movie formula. In fact, I'll bet he's bloody sick of it, which is part of what makes Kiss Kiss Bang Bang so fresh and familiar at the same time.

Robert Downey, Jr. stays out of thesmokinggun.com long enough to play Harry, an East-Coast burglar who finds himself in LA for callbacks for a detective movie role. While being chased down by the NYPD, Harry stumbles into the audition room, where he is mistaken for one of the lined-up actors and is prompted to read from the script. With his pent up panic and a bullet lodged in his shoulder, Harry plays the role brilliantly in a nervous breakdown, and is then asked by the producer (Larry Miller) to come to Hollywood.

Harry's being screentested for the role of the detective, so the studio assigns him to tag along with a real life P.I. for research. He's paired up with the jaded tough guy Gay Perry (why can't a private dick be known for his skills as a detective? Anyway, he's played by Val Kilmer) who supplies the hard-boiled sarcasm that the movie burns like diesel fuel. Naturally, Perry's none too happy about babysitting Harry:

Perry: "Look up the word 'idiot' in the dictionary. Know what you'll find?"

Harry: "A picture of me?"

Perry: "No -- the definition of the word 'idiot', which you fucking are!"

It's been a long time since I've seen a movie this genuinely funny, even when it's playing on the old buddy-movie gag where one guy has all the bad luck throughout. I'll let you guess which guy that is in this case. The comedy involving Gay Perry, though, tends to rely too heavily on his being gay, but by Will & Grace standards the jokes are fairly versatile.

There's also Michelle "Is That Katie Holmes?" Monaghan playing the stereotypical but sharp aspiring actress, Harmony. Once the bodies start piling up, Harmony is more and more in her element since she was a lifelong fan of the gritty "Johnny Gossamer" detective novels, which had such flowery titles as "Die-Job" and "You'll Never Die in This Town Again." Her ability to improvise comes straight from her education in these books, and it saves Harry's skin more than a couple times.

The romantic game of tag Harmony and Harry play seems forced at certain plot twists, but it works because we learn their each other's best escape from the craziness around them. She's been around the block and he's a man-boy with flawed yet resolute principles about women; it's especially cute to watch how he handles a spider that crawls inside Harmony's bra when she's passed out.

Harry does the narration, which is where I see either see someone falling in love with the movie's charm or being turned off by its gimmicky smugness. At times Harry doubles back on the storytelling and apologizes because he screwed it up, but later he just lets the plot roll out, thankfully.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's strong dimension of satire, which attacks LA bitterly and lampoons hard-boiled novels lovingly, is where the intelligence of its comedy transcends most of its genre:

As Harry narrates "the case of the... the dead people in LA," he stings Hollywood for its impersonal social networks, damaged-goods women, and the laughable results of its citizens' acting dreams. These criticisms are nothing new, of course, but as things unfold we don't blame him for longing to go home to New York.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's plot is lifted from those Raymond Chandler serials, and everything from the loaded dialogue to the ridiculous strokes of fortune (and misfortune) pay homage to the campy days of noir. They also make most of the movie a bonafide riot.

I think at this point you get the idea that are plenty of people to whom I'd recommend this DVD, so as Harry would say:
"Don't worry, I saw the last Lord of the Rings. I'm not going to end this 17 times."