3 stars out of 5
I had 2 hours to kill and it had just started raining; this is perhaps the perfect movie for that scenario. What we have here is a comedic whodunnit in the not-so-grand tradition of Murder by Death and Knives Out. We’re in London, where Adrien Brody is intent on turning the stage production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap into a Hollywood movie. I was finding Brody’s character very annoying but then they tell us “the most annoying character in a whodunnit is murdered” and, voilà/whew, Brody is murdered. So now we have a real-life mystery within a staged mystery, poking fun at all the whodunnit tropes. It’s that kind of comedy.
Jaded detective Sam Rockwell (reliable as usual — wait, I guess that’s what “reliable” means) is paired with wide-eyed rookie cop Saoirse Ronan. I remain quite fond of Ms. Ronan who’s not first thought of as a comic actor, but let’s not forget I first saw her in Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, and she also had a small part in The French Dispatch. And let us also recall that Adrien Brody is part of Anderson’s recurring troupe. These facts are important because early on, it seems like director Tom George and writer Mark Chappell are trying their darnedest to make a Wes Anderson film, they try too hard, and it basically falls flat.
Ah, but the movie eventually finds its own voice, a likable enough mid-tempo comic groove. Ronan charms us as always, and I was also quite amused by Harris Dickerson as a young Richard Attenborough, who did indded star in the original West End production of The Mousetrap. (There is some loose basis in fact here, if you like that sort of thing.)
As is often the case with mysteries, even farcical ones, things get a bit convoluted toward the end, and the story gets a little away from the filmmakers. But that doesn’t take away too much from a movie that’s great for an airplane, or ducking in out of the rain, or your next bout of Covid.
Jack Silbert, curator