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Reviews of Recent and Upcoming DVD Releases
Centre Daily Times
12 August 2008
By Billy O'Keefe
Watching the Detectives (NR, 2007, Peace Arch)
As the owner of an independent video store, movie buff Neil (Cillian Murphy) sees plenty of excitement. Unfortunately, all of that excitement comes in video form, and any attempts to create some real-life thrills fall embarrassingly short. Enter Violet (Lucy Liu), who seems to have the exact opposite situation and plenty of excitement to pass around. Can Neil handle all that stimulation? More importantly, can you? Even more importantly, should you? Likeable though Watching the Detectives initially and semi-consistently is, it lacks a cuteness filter. One weird thing begets another, and once the zaniness starts to pile up, it becomes a bit much to bear. Considering all this weirdness is the movie's main point of distinction, as well as a device to take the story down a rather predictable romantic comedy road, that's no small problem to have. Though never wholly grating nor so weird that it cannot be understood, Detectives still feels like a lot of excessive wackiness justfor the sake of it. By the end, exhaustion—and very possibly irritation depending on your threshold for cute overload—has settled in where gratification should be. No extras.
