Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Seen for the second time in January 2013.

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is a movie that tries too hard. It tries too hard in every conceivable way. It tries too hard to be clever. It tries too hard to be funny. It tries too hard to be cool. And it mostly fails. But I chuckled a few times, and as far as violent and expletive filled suspense thrillers as light entertainment go, this was indeed lightly entertaining.

Some ideas, like the gay private eye, are pretty good if not irritating as often as they are enjoyable. The irritation level on this highly self-conscious movie is fairly high. But it's not a bad movie. It's just very smug and too fond of its own cleverness. It's a very shallow showy cleverness that wields itself like a sledgehammer forcing you to acknowledge how funny it finds itself. It's like meeting some drunk yuppie at a bar faking some foreign accent and saying different variations of the same thing over and over again, winking heavily and nudging you in the ribs each time, until you respond despite the fact that you've been politely trying to ignore him. Maybe it's not clever after all, so much as it's persistent and perversely confident.

Also, to tell the truth, I am not what you would call a fan of Robert Downey Jr. though he's nebbishly good here. I do like Val Kilmer and this is otherwise well cast. But trying to tackle a serious subject like child sexual abuse is sort of a misstep. It comes off more exploitative than serious. I say leave that stuff for the Lifetime movies starring Meredith Baxter Birney of my childhood memories, and leave the light entertainment light. Note to filmmakers, it doesn't make your superficially stylish, sweary, violent fun-times movie "better" if you get "serious" for a moment. It's a cheap trick and it actually makes your movie worse.

And yeah, I guess I watched it for a second time. I realized I had seen it before about 10 minutes into the movie. What can I say, I've spent much of my life drinking heavily and watching movies. So I forgot about this one. In my defense, it's a fairly forgettable movie. Grade B-.