“If the bugs won, I could shove a burrito in your face.”

Justin’s rating: And I never laughed once. The end.

Justin’s review: The mystery that I always want solved in cinema is why certain popular actors seem to disappear virtually overnight. There was a spate of time that Lucy Liu seemed like a Big Deal and would pop up constantly in the early 2000s in movies like Charlie’s Angels, Lucky Number Slevin, and Kill Bill Vol. 1. Then around 2007, the Liu Era was over. She kept working, but she wasn’t a headliner. Like many others, she faded.

I guess it’s like that with a lot of actors. You’re used to seeing them around everywhere until one day they’re not, and you don’t truly notice until a while later. It’s a sad realization.

Anyway, toward the end of the Liu Era was this quirky romcom-film noir called Watching the Detectives. It stars Cillian Murphy as Neil, a video store owner with not-so-secret film noir aspirations. It’s really weird watching Murphy try to be this light-hearted romcom lead, because it’s absolutely not the kind of actor we all know him to be. He’s better at being a little odd and frightening and smart in movies, not Handsome McGoofy in Meet Cute 2: The Cutening.

I’ll let it pass for now, because I’m quietly envious of Neil’s dream job here. Sure, he isn’t making any money, but he get to marinate in his favorite movies while his geeky friends hang out and jaw about cinema on overstuffed couches surrounded by cinema memorabilia. Stupid movie, making me miss video stores even more.

Wishing that his life was more like a movie, Neil gets more than he bargained for when an aspiring femme fatale walks into his store and strikes up a relationship. This is Violet (Liu), an impulsive prankster who seems taken with Neil but also determined to drag him along into every insane idea she has.

If Murphy is a bit miscast here, just wait until you see Lucy Liu — who was about 40 years old here — playing a full-strength manic pixie dream girl. She’s abruptly doing the most insane things, like trashing a rival video store or stealing strangers’ picnic baskets at the park, and because Neil is inexplicably head-over-heels, he goes along with everything. Begrudgingly.

But the more I watched Violet, the more I couldn’t shake that she is an actual sociopath working to mess up this guy’s life. She always seems like she has this mask covering up who she really is, and that unnerved me. Her argument is that despite constantly lying and throwing Neil’s life in disarray, he’s ultimately better for having her around because it makes things interesting.

Maybe this is a bucket of cold water dashed upon hopeless romantic moviegoers who think that this is the ideal woman for them. He clearly doesn’t trust her, especially when she encounters people that he knows. This is not a healthy relationship in the slightest, and it makes no sense that Neil sticks with this psycho, unless he’s really that desperate.

See, the general idea of this movie is that Neil is a super hardcore film noir fanboy who’s acting this stuff out in life, and so he deserves a woman who’s like this. Yet the movie barely establishes this for his character. He does maybe one mildly quirky thing at the beginning and watches a couple of film clips out of the corner of his eye, and that’s suppose to merit Looney Liu? I don’t think so.

Watching the Detectives has a glimmer of a workable idea and some charming dialogue, but it’s miscasting and screwball plot had me scratching my head. It has no idea how to merge film noir and romcom tropes into a cohesive whole. What’s the message here? Heck if I know. This feels like the last time I would ever get a movie set in a video store, and it’s wasted on this?

Intermission!

• You get shot if you don’t rewind. your VHS tapes
• Competitive jumprope is something I would watch
• A good friend will spill water on your girlfriend for you
• “No no no, it’s definitely you.”
• His store only sells VHS by the looks of it. Even for 2008, that was pretty niche.
• Remember when people would talk on the phone via earphone cord?
• “Fletch right?” “No, his name was Donald.”
• How come zombies don’t puke?
• “Cool… but scary.”
• Lucy Liu is a pretty funny fake drunk
• Kissing through a wooden fence is as awkward as it sounds
• “Sounds to me like she was cookoo for Coco Puffs.”
• The not-so-subtle dig at streaming
• The film noir lighting in the office
• “Not again Tony.”
• Violet’s TV set is a fish tank
• “How come you guys are eating our food?”
• The rock concert with the standups
• Also, don’t use lighters at a concert where everyone else are cardboard standups
• If your only ambition in life is to nail a guitar solo, you’ll throw yourself off a roof once you’ve done it
• Cape Fear reference in the theater
• How many times this movie says “Korean snuff cartoons” and “Japanese deathmatch anime”
• The secret knock was a bad idea