Its not often you come across a major Hollywood production featuring a big-name cast which also goes all-out to take some risks and be different. In fact, to say its a bit of a rarity in the movie world would be akin to saying lead-player Robert Downey Jr. has made a couple of minor mistakes over the years. So I really wish I could say The Singing Detective is a success but Id be a filthy no-good liar, so I wont.
Adapted by Dennis Potter from his own critically-acclaimed 1986 BBC mini-series of the same name, its the tale of a hospital-bound novelist (Downey Jr.) whose paranoid hallucinations begin to consume his every waking minute. The events of his one and only successful book the story of a crooning 50s gumshoe go round and round in his head until hes no longer able to separate fiction from reality and neither, for that matter, are we.
Its a marvellously-directed piece of work, featuring a wonderful performance from Downey Jr. and some great support from the likes of Robin Wright Penn, Adrien Brody and Mel Gibson (hes virtually unrecognisable as a bald, bespectacled psycho-therapist). Unfortunately, its also one of the most jumbled, messy and downright confusing films Ive ever seen.
Part of the problem is that, while the TV format gave the tale precious room for manoeuvre, here the whole thing has to be squeezed into less than two hours. If this valiant effort is anything to go by, it just cant be done. With no time to explain whats going on or properly develop any of the facets of the story, the whole thing moves so quickly that as a viewer theres a constant feeling that youre being left behind.
There are snippets of a damn good production in there, but they just never come together to give us a satisfying finished article.