This Canadian import is a droll, slightly tart slice of PI whimsy.
That’s actually too superficial a description of writer/director Evan Morgan’s engaging feature film debut. At times, The Kid Detective seems to be taking place in a slightly existential universe not quite our own, where characters drop mordant one-liners without cracking a smile.
At other times, matters unexpectedly turn real-world serious, and emotions are real-world familiar.
When Abe (Adam Brody) and Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) realize they're being followed
by a dark sedan, they waver between two equally uncomfortable choices:
attempt to flee ... or confront.
It’s an intriguing balancing act, which — for the most part — Morgan skillfully navigates. He’s helped considerably by star Adam Brody’s morose, vulnerable and yet unexpectedly engaging performance as the rather unusual title character.
As an adolescent, Abe Applebaum (Jesse Noah Gruman) became a local celebrity in the cheerful little town of Willowbrook, Ontario, thanks to his facility for solving minor mysteries and wacky crimes. His successes resulted mostly from perception and an acute sense of psychology: the way people think and therefore act.
Partly out of respect — and likely also out of amusement — the townsfolk even set him up in a downtown office, where good friend Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato) worked as receptionist. But then she disappeared one day. Despite Abe’s best efforts, and that of the local police, neither she — nor her body — ever was found.
This failure leaves Abe traumatized.
Now 32 (and played by Brody), Abe works out of the same office, stubbornly solving the same trivial cases — finding lost cats, and so forth — in between hangovers and raging attacks of self-pity. He has become the town joke, barely making ends meet; his frustrated parents (Wendy Crewson and Jonathan Whittaker) clearly have spent years trying to prod him into responsible adulthood.
Even Abe’s Goth receptionist (Sarah Sutherland, hilariously condescending) treats him with contempt.
Enter Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), a 16-year-old orphan who brings a real case, by asking his help in solving the brutal murder of her boyfriend, Patrick. Although initially wondering if she’s putting him on — we see the wary uncertainty in Brody’s gaze — Caroline is absolutely serious, her wide, guileless eyes radiating sincerity. And, indeed, Patrick was stabbed 17 times (!).
To say the subsequent investigation proceeds in fits and starts would be an understatement. Although his intuition remains sound, Abe’s sloppy appearance and occasionally reckless behavior hinder more than help. None of this shakes Caroline’s faith; indeed, she even drives him from one lead to the next — Abe doesn’t have a car — and becomes a de facto partner.
Informants, suspects, red herrings and possibly related distractions include Patrick’s best friend Calvin (Dallas Edwards); a sexually frank and promiscuous older girl named Melody (Amalia Williamson); a notorious group of toughs called the Red Shoe Gang; a potent street drug dubbed “Ego Boosters”; and a rowdy sub-culture of local youth — known as the “overnighters” — who spend weekends hanging out in the closed (and supposedly locked) high school.
Abe pursues all this with a blend of flimsy pride, wavering interest and fatalism; were it not for Caroline’s trust, we suspect he’d give up. Brody makes him the ultimate tragic hero: gaunt, lonely and still haunted by what he perceives as his failure to save Gracie. That said, Brody also has a stage comic’s timing for snarky one-liners and wry observations; many moments in this film are laugh-out-loud funny.
On occasion, the clipped dialogue — in word and attitude — feels lifted from a Sam Spade movie; Brody’s delivery is that dry. But he never slides into genre mockery, and that dichotomy between his serious approach and the at-times arch commentary also is amusing.
Then, in a heartbeat, things turn grim, the coarse dialogue and reckless drug use reminding us that this story isn’t entirely glib.
Morgan also has an equally shrewd understanding of the human condition, as best demonstrated during Abe’s candor with Caroline, at a particularly low moment. “It’s difficult,” he laments, “to accept the difference between who you are in your head, and who you are in the world.”
So true.
Caroline is an intriguing puzzle. The girl’s confidence in Abe seems ludicrous, given his wealth of flaws, and yet Nélisse sells it. Caroline is sweet, perhaps naïve, but absolutely not gullible or slow-witted. Nélisse makes her the epitome of the wholesome Girl Next Door, but she’s no archetype. We become so accustomed to her “Gal Friday” role, at Abe’s side, that it’s jarring when she begs off, one day, because she has to, um, go to school.
Sharon Crandall and the always impressive Tzi Ma pop up briefly, as Patrick’s parents: understandably suspicious of this scruffy character who claims to be investigating their son’s murder. Ma’s chilly verbal dissection of Abe is the ultimate in squirming discomfort.
Marcus Zane is memorable as the sneering Jace, a high school bad boy; Brent Skagford is persuasive as the sympathetic barkeep at Abe’s favorite watering hole.
Jay McCarrol’s well-integrated score slides between orchestral-style shading and tasty combo jazz; the cue employed during a montage of young Abe’s successes is a saucy little swinger.
The Kid Detective may be too contrived and precious for mainstream tastes, but mystery addicts — and particularly mystery movie addicts — will have a good time.
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