The Kid Detective is a mix of a saga of a washed-up former child detective and an actual detective case that may turn his life back to his previous fame.
Abe Applebaum (American actor Adam Brody) was a celebrated kid detective whose luck hasn't been great of late. Abe is forlorned over the one case he couldn't solve: the kidnapping of his close friend Gracie Gulliver.
Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) comes to Abe with a case: find out who murdered her boyfriend.
Abe seems a bit over his head with the case. There are a few running jokes, like he always hides in closets, and the recurrence of the Red Shoe Gang. His life is so pathetic that Caroline, who is in secondary school, drives Abe around.
Evan Morgan came up with an intriguing full-length feature debut as a writer/director. Morgan is poking fun at the noir of the detective story while exploring a real case.
There are problems. Brody is cute and charming enough to pull off the lead. Even for a washed-up child detective, Brody is rather old (over 40). Nélisse is 21 playing a naive 17-18 year old so that works.
A sequence in the middle of the film where he is trapped in closets (plural) is a long, excruciating to watch scene that adds little to the plot. You don't want a simple detective case in a film but you also don't want the audience too perplexed. Once he gets a significant (to him) clue, he solves the case, complete with confession in about 10-12 minutes on film.
There is a clue in the process that led your humble narrator into a possibility that was much more interesting than the actual reality in the film.
Nélisse plays the naivete well. Wendy Crewson has a marvelous role as Abe's mother and Sarah Sutherland plays subtle as Abe's goth receptionist. Peter MacNeill and Maurice Dean Wint also excel in their roles.
North Bay, Ontario works quite well as the dreamy, small town of Willowbrook. While the film is Canadian, the film is meant to cross over easily to an American audience.
There are gruesome details in the solution to the case, without giving anything away.
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The film works as a straight ahead detective case, though the parts of his washed-up life are more entertaining. The Kid Detective is not a consistent film but overall enjoyable. The more you like Adam Brody, the more likely you are to enjoy the film.
The Kid Detective made the TIFF Top 10 list for Canadian films in 2020. The film received 4 Canadian Screen Award nominations: Best Original Screenplay (Morgan); Best Art Direction or Production Design; Best Original Score; and the John Dunning Best First Feature Award.
The Kid Detective is available on Crave in Canada and Starz in the United States.
video credit: YouTube/Sony Pictures Entertainment
photo credit: The Kid Detective film
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