This drowns in its own behaviors and cliches.
Chris Pine’s directorial debut of “Poolman” is supposed to serve as a comedic love letter to “Chinatown” and many of the great movie mysteries the American cinema has to offer, but it never amounts to much. The actor admits during an interview with Josh Horowitz that the character he plays may be on the spectrum, but we don’t emphasize on that, because he goes through the motions constantly.
This character, named Darren Barrenman, is a motel pool man, who lives in a trailer outside a motel, cleans the pool every morning, and meditates underwater. He looks like a cool dude, especially with his long hair and beard, but he sure doesn’t act cool. In fact, he’s quite immature.
As we begin to watch the film, we see he listens to “Lakme” on his portable Coby CD player, almost the way Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill listens to his walkman in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but it never becomes a joke or a throwback. Even “Anomalisa” had an interesting concept on whether this classical music is called “Lakme” or “British Airways.”
We get a few laughs in another opening scene, when he has sex with his much older palates instructor girlfriend Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who suggests they should get married. But this love story goes down the tube. Not just because she falls for the coffee guy Wayne (John Ortiz), but because their relationship is so soggy, it ends up becoming embarrassing.
Then, there’s the femme fatale named June Del Ray (DeWanda Wise), who comes into Darren’s life, wearing a yellow dress and a black hat, and asking him to expose a councilman (Stephen Tobolowsky) for bribery charges. Since he loves mysteries and has intentions to make his community a better place, he plays the sleuth. And since this is supposed to be a sleuth parody of some sort, she also gets a Cleopatra hairstyle in one scene, and tears drawn down her cheek in another. So, she must be a film noir character.
Darren is also making a documentary with his friends-the therapist Diane (Annette Bening) and her filmmaker husband Jack (Danny DeVito)-and they both collaborate with him on the case. And it also becomes a journey of self-discovery for him, as his medications feature visions regarding trees and lizards. What does it all mean? Not even Diane can examine that.
“Poolman” gave me nearly the same uncomfortable reactions to “Horrible Bosses 2,” because they both feature Pine is such degrading performances that I wonder how these titles would be listed in his filmography, which includes “Hell or High Water,” “Star Trek,” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.” Placing himself on double duty as the director and star, he tries way too hard to lampoon on the film noir genre, and it all becomes derivative, typical, and unfunny.
It’s basically the same complaint I had last year with Charlie Day’s “Fool’s Paradise” and this year with Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted.” None of these actors can represent their films’ targets, and they have big names who feel like they should be somewhere else. DeVito, Leigh, Bening, Wise, and Tobolowsky all can do better than what Pine and co-writer Ian Gotler (“My Heroes Were Cowboys”) give them here. And honestly, I have no idea what the movie is trying to say about the pool guy or anyone in his case.
“Poolman,” I think we can agree, is a dreadful hack job. Case closed.
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