CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

hall895 The Singing Detective is a movie which defies description or explanation. Any attempt at a summation of the plot would be futile. It's a comedy, it's a musical, it's a mystery, it's film noir. Well, it has elements of all of those things anyway but the end product does not fit neatly into any category. Structure? The movie really has none. This means that, while it may be interesting, it often comes across as somewhat incoherent. Much of the movie seems to take place inside the main character's head. But that character is the most unreliable of narrators. He doesn't have any grasp on what is real so how can the audience? This is a movie you just have to try to figure out for yourself.Robert Downey, Jr. plays the main character, Dan Dark. Dan is a writer of cheap, lurid detective novels. Right now he finds himself laid up in the hospital with the worst case of psoriasis you've ever seen. He's in terrible pain, pretty much completely incapacitated and quite possibly losing his mind. He lapses into a fantasy world in which he is the main character in his own novel. But characters from the novel start to appear in the real world. Or do they? Are we still inside Dan Dark's mind? If so, how do we get out because inside Dan Dark's mind is not a particularly pleasant place to be.This carries on throughout the film, real world and fantasy worlds colliding. Even what seems obviously real may not be. We meet Dan's wife, played enigmatically by Robin Wright. She's cheating on him. Or does Dan just think she is so that is what is presented as reality? In flashbacks Carla Gugino plays Dan's mother. But then she shows up as an entirely different person in Dan's delusions. Mel Gibson plays a rather strange psychologist who may well be able to help Dan if only Dan actually wanted to be helped. Maybe Dan prefers to retreat into his own mind, into his fantasy world. Does this all come together in the end? Not really. You're left largely wondering what in the world it was that you just saw. But confusing though it may be the movie still manages to be pretty entertaining. Downey turns in an excellent performance. Wright and Gibson are very good as well. Adrien Brody and Katie Holmes are among the performers who are solid in smaller roles.The movie is well-acted all around and the story draws you in. But as you go deeper and deeper there is the sense the movie spirals a little bit out of control. Some structure would have helped. But if told in entirely straightforward fashion the story would not have been nearly as interesting. This movie is unique. Some will love it. Some will hate it. It is a movie which was an interesting experiment. Maybe you'll appreciate what was attempted here, maybe you won't. Everyone is going to have their own unique personal reaction to this movie. To each their own.

Daniel Fuller The film plays out like a Technicolour fever dream as reality meets fiction meets fantasy through the eyes of Robert Downey Jr's Dan Dark, a long-suffering author with an eye-watering painful looking skin condition.Downey is on top form, and the gradual erosion of the boundaries between fantasy and reality is extremely effective as characters from the page walk into Dark's real world and vice versa.His illness represents the decay apparent in his life since his difficult childhood, and all the clever metaphors therein are exploited beyond the obvious.Downey is, as always, fantastic- the scenes with Mel Gibson a delight, and Robin Wright Penn exudes a vulnerable warmth in her role as his long suffering wife. Adrien Brody's presence is superfluous; still when he is on screen he's pretty darn good.It's a film that's not as clever as it thinks it is, though- all that smart symbolism is explored beyond the plot of the story until it becomes an exercise in showing you how to be clever on film, though failing because it's so obvious.Great performances, and all in all a wonderfully bold- yet fragile staging- of an a descent into illness and redemption, but flawed in it's brash attempt to overwhelm the audience with clever twists and turns and techniques which ultimately give the impression it's trying far too hard to be subversive.

Bob_the_Hobo They went for a 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' with more style, and ended up with 'Battlefield Earth', minus the great acting. I haven't seen the original series, so I can't compare the two, but the series lasted pretty long, so it couldn't have been bad.The acting isn't atrocious, but Robert Downey, Jr. is too tough to look at through the beginning. He mumbles, and I can't understand what he is saying. 'Speak up!' I once found myself yelling at my television. Mel Gibson is just pointless here. His role has no substance, and as the doctor he accomplishes nothing. In fact, the only good performance was from Katie Holmes, who was quite honestly a sight for sore eyes after so many pointless scenes.That's the main problem here; The Singing Detective had no clear point. There's a lot of smaller stories weaved in, but they don't seem relevant. Bob Downer is stuck in that hospital, looking around, occasionally imagining that he is in some kind of dance club (?). There's something about his wife as well, and finally, Adrien Brody and Jon Polito play a bumbling duo that can't quite seem to catch a man strapped to a bed.This might have had a point, somewhere. Until we find out what that was, save your money.

Martin Bradley Whatever merits Dennis Potter's drama had on TV they are completely obliterated in this large-screen Hollywood version. Whereas Potter's "Pennies from Heaven" transferred magnificently to the cinema, (for starters it had a plot, a sense of both time and place and some stunning musical numbers), this is both inconsequential and largely incomprehensible. (If I hadn't seen the television series I'm sure I would never have known what was going on). Not that working out what's happening is really worth the effort; it's fundamentally mediocre and since Potter himself did the adaptation we know where the blame lies. A decent cast, including a heavily disguised Mel Gibson, do their best with the material but no-one seems to be able to work up any enthusiasm. One to avoid.