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The late British playwright Dennis Potter’s magnum opus made a splash when it hit BBC TV back in the mid 1980s. Here, in the hands of Keith Gordon (A Midnight Clear), the gumshoe parody cum musical gets a format upgrade and a locale switch from WW2 London to contemporary Los Angles. Robert Downey Jr. has the demanding role of Dan Dark, a two-bit pulp novelist hospital-ridden with a rare skin disease that makes him look like a "human pizza" and locks his joints. The drama hops from Dark’s struggles with his estranged wife (a lithe Robin Wright Penn) over the rights to his literary collection to fever-induced delusions where his alter ego, a Bogart-style PI who "warbles," works a case. And then there’s his unenviable childhood, which was marred by his mother’s unscrupulous affairs. At junctures the film breaks into song — lip-synched doo-wop and golden oldies. The idea is comically poetic at first, but by the end it’s become trite, and it cannibalizes the caustic wit of Potter’s dark prose. Downey nails down the gonzo mélange, yet it’s Mel Gibson, unrecognizable as a balding, Birkenstock-sandaled psychoanalyst, who delivers the jaw dropper. Katie Holmes, Adrien Brody, and Carla Gugino (Karen Cisco) all crop up in quirky bits, but for all its pop and verve, this Detective just can’t sustain its tune.
BY TOM MEEK
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