Review of Watching the Detectives (2007) by Scott M — 16 Mar 2008

Okay, I like pretty much every movie of Cillian's I have seen, whether independent or mainstream.

But this movie is WAY off in many aspects!! Even for a "lightweight romantic comedy". What about ANY character growth? Any surprises in the plot?

Spoiler Warning.

The script in this was lousy, I have to say. "Shut up !head" "Shut your mouth !face" "I'll ! down your throat" "Shut up you dumb !"... come on.

And Neil is hard to watch at times, just because he's extremely stupid and can't seem to do anything right. When Violet treats him badly and he leaves her house "sad", I thought maybe he was staying away from her. Nope, when she calls he's casually trying to meet up with her again. Huh? Why? It's never really shown.

And when she does things to put him down or embarrass him and other friends of his he just acts very stupid like "oh well, what can you do". I wanted to yell "Stop crying while you play baseball and grow up!".

Yes there are a few funny scenes, so I think they should have just made this a comedy and ignored all the "romance" or lack there of.

The other comedy movie Cillian was in (Intermission) worked BECAUSE of character progression and he genuinely seemed to get angry when wronged either by his gf or his boss. Here he just comes off as a doormat who will come back for more no matter what. COME ON!

So I will give it 2 stars... 1 star because Cillian is in it, the other star because of three funny scenes in the movie.