A Perfect Kiss

About six years ago, when it was playing in theaters, I wrote a review of the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. A rather lame and superficial review. I figure that between that injustice I did to the film, and the fact that it's now over half a decade later, writing about the film again would be okay.

In short: go watch this movie!

The longer version: this movie was written and directed by Shane Black, the man who wrote the first two Lethal Weapon movies. He was a pioneer in the "buddy cop" genre, and in this film, he tweaks everything he made quasi-sacred. Robert Downey Jr. stars as a petty thief who gets mistaken for an actor, and is thrown into training to play a detective in an upcoming movie. He trains by shadowing a private detective played by Val Kilmer. The two of them wind up embroiled in a murder conspiracy, and hilarity ensues. Lots of hilarity.

The comedy in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang plays on many levels. At its most shrewd, it comments on movie-making itself. The whole "I'm an actor" conceit is a vehicle to skewer spoiled Hollywood celebrities. The main character himself is the narrator, and a really lousy one. He gets bits wrong, or out of order, or muddled. And he doesn't just tell his story, he talks to the audience with full knowledge of the fact that he's telling a story... and doing it badly.

But then there are base slapstick jokes, clever sight gags, speedy word play, and all sorts of other humor peppered throughout the film. It's like an episode of Arrested Development, packed so tightly that it rewards multiple viewings.

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are both fantastic in this movie (as is the "femme fatale" of this psuedo-noir, Michelle Monaghan). Downey is sarcastic and self-aware, and totally likeable. Kilmer is equally coarse but fun, berating his partner for believing in every stupid cliché about movies, the private detective business, and more. And an extra bonus about the Downey/Kilmer pairing is the reputation both had as actors at the time. Kilmer was and still is widely known to be difficult to work with. Downey was coming off his second plunge into drug abuse, pre-Iron Man and pre-Sherlock Holmes, at a point in his career where no one would work with him. That two "impossible" actors would appear together in the same movie? Unreal!

You don't have to like either actor, or the detective genre, to like this movie -- though you'll certainly love it more if you do. It's enough to simply like storytelling in general, as this movie is such a carefully crafted send-up of the process. In that original review, I rated the movie an A-, and expressed uncertainty about whether it would be on my top 100 movie list. Having watched it again lately, let me amend all that: it's a grade A movie, and definitely is on my list.