Simply A Masterpiece

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

*Spoiler/plot- The Singing Detective, 2003, An hospitalized 3rd rate hack writer of detective books suffering from his psychosomatic illness needs to free himself from his daydream fiction life of his alter ego, a singing detective to get mentally adjusted and well.*Special Stars- Robert Downey Jr, Robin Wright Penn, Adrien Brody, Jon Polito, Katie Holmes, Mel Gibson.*Theme- Your life could be a novel or a dream, it's up to you.*Trivia/location/goofs- Paramount Pictures, B & W film noir sequences with present day scenes, Rated 'R' for the multiple 40's sex scenes involving fictional call-girls and gangsters. Look for a heavily disguised famous lead actor & film producer on camera playing a helpful bald psychologist. Shot around downtown Los Angeles and the Silver Lake area.*Emotion- A rather crazy confusing film with too many 'flash-back' or dream sequences in film noir and back to plot present-day reality, but somewhat saved by the rest of the film's scenes and actors. It's all clues, with no solutions. This film has some spirited musical lip-sync songs with a killer 50's music tracks. It's a very odd plot and film.

I had heard about the leading actor starring in this film, and then I found out that it was based on a popular six part television series with Sir Michael Gambon, but having seen Bewitched, The A Team and Charlie's Angels I don't think it mattered that I hadn't seen the television version before the film. Basically Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) is suffering from the terrible conditions of arthritis and an extreme case of psoriasis, but he is also going through paranoia and bad writer's block. With his fever and mental condition dwindling, to escape his pain and concerns he has a habit of going into his own fantasy world, where he confuses himself with the leading character of the story he plans to write, The Singing Detective. In this fantasy world Dan is an undercover detective in a 1930's setting, and he often goes into a musical number, and this also happens sometimes when he sees people in the real world, he sees them doing it too. His love interest/wife Nicola (Robin Wright Penn) comes into the hospital often to see if he is improving physically and mentally, and he is often seen by psychologist Dr. Gibbon (Mel Gibson) who tries to get through to him and make him see reality, and stop obsessing about his writing. Dan does have his skin condition improve, but his mental state is not so much the same, and it comes to the point where his fantasy world may be coming into or taking over reality, until by the end he has almost become his title character, but it does not seem to matter to Nicole. Also starring Jeremy Northam as Mark Binney, Katie Holmes as Nurse Mills, Adrien Brody as First Hood and Jon Polito as Second Hood. I can see what the critics mean that Downey Jr. overacts some of the scenes, but he's not too bad, Wright Penn could have had a bit more time on screen, and Gibson certainly does make an impression as the doctor, he is almost unrecognisable. This is based on the work of Dennis Potter, who suffered the same conditions as the leading character, but I am sure that the critics are right that the original version did not need a remake film, despite some good costume and lavishly lit sequences, but I did find the musical numbers catchy, and overall, I didn't think it was a terrible period musical drama. Okay!

If it weren't for the original TV series I fancy that this version of Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective' would be regarded as an unusual and interesting film, maybe with something of a cult following. But inevitably it is compared to the original series and can't help but shrivel in its illustrious presence.So why remake the 1986 TV series as a feature film? The original is one of the best works ever made for TV and it runs to almost seven hours. It could be that the producers wanted to bring the piece to a wider audience and that is laudable, but the time constraints mean that much of the original narrative is stripped away and with it goes most of the emotional power, leaving a peculiar and spare story about a bitter, misogynistic man who is hospitalised with psoriasis and who is haunted by feelings of guilt concerning the death of his mother. This means that fresh audiences of the story will probably see it as a piece of rather clichéd psychodrama made interesting only by its visceral dialogue and quirky dream sequences, rather than as the masterpiece it is. Maybe if the producers were really committed to the work they would have added another 30 minutes to the film to give it a better chance of success as a work of art. I suspect a half-hour more running time wouldn't have saved it but it would have allowed more material from Dan Dark/Philip Marlow's childhood to be included, for that is where the emotional core of the work lies. The fantasy sequences are meaningless without reference to the real emotions that Dan Dark has left behind. This lack of context drains the film and its characters of meaning and it is left just being quirky and slightly interesting; a sort of puzzling crime scene. The question being: who stole the story's soul, and where has it been stashed? In parts, RDJ's performance is very good (he excels hamming it up as the fictional detective of the title), but in parts it slips, and generally the acting comes across as more mannered than the British TV original (makes one appreciate just how great that cast were). In particular Mel Gibson , in dodgy prosthetic comb-over, is rather grating.The finger-prints of the Hollywood studio can be found all over the cinematic crime-scene. The songs should have stayed in the 1940s. Shifting them to the 1950s seems like an attempt to make them have more commercial appeal and perhaps allow RDJ to look a bit more cool when lip syncing - which rather misses the point of the songs. He gives the game away when he actually sings a song over the end credits - I bet Dennis Potter didn't put that into his screen adaptation - more likely it was RDJ's agent. It has the effect of eradicating any lingering sense that you've been watching a drama. Of course by the time the credits are rolling you've already been served up an ending even more anodyne than the problematic ending of the original, with RDJ strolling out the hospital looking like he's just got back from a two-week vacation in Florida.There are some well crafted scenes but ironically the film looks rather small and studio-bound compared to its TV predecessor. I think this is partly because of the originals' brilliant direction by Jon Amiel. It was shot in film often in wonderful locations such as the Forest of Dean and so even cinematically it was a hard act to follow.So many considerations make one realise what a doomed artistic enterprise this was. Potter was at his most brilliant when writing about the things he was most familiar with, especially the Britain of the 1940s and 1950s with its repressive class system, and his childhood in the Forest of Dean. Removing this cultural setting (along with 5 hours of complex interwoven imagery) renders The Singing Detective impotent. I can't help but think he knew this - and I'd also like to believe that any adaptation he handed over was hacked to pieces in the making of this film. It may also be that he wanted to leave an extra financial legacy to his family, and handing over his most celebrated work to Hollywood was the best way of accomplishing that end.My plea to first-time viewers of The Singing Detective is: do not be put off by this feature film version. Please, please watch the original! It's breadth is enormous and it will make you think and weep like the best art should.

This film is about a man with a debilitating skin disease killing his time by imagining himself to be involved in crime, murder and seduction.I already thought "The Singing Detective" was very boring after watching fifteen minutes of it. And it did not get better throughout the film.First of all, the plot is incoherent and fragmented. The present, childhood memories and Dan's imagination are all independent of each other with no connections at all. I felt I was watching a bunch of jumbled up scenes.Secondly, how can this be classified as a musical? There are only three short scenes where the actors lip synch the songs. The songs don't even tell the plot, they are just there as background music. "Dreamgirls", "Hairspray" and "Chicago" are musicals, but this is certainly not.Thirdly, I feel cheated by the cover of the disc. It bills Katie Holmes and Adrien Brody , but they have such minor and dispensable parts. Oh wait, actually the whole film is dispensable. I thought the US$1.1 I spent on buying this film was completely wasted. Watching this film is pure torture.