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A Paramount release. Written by Dennis Potter; directed by Keith Gordon; starring Robert Downey Jr., Mel Gibson, Robin Wright-Penn. Released to DVD on March 23, 2004. 
I was in a state of sheer unadulterated bliss during my screening of writer/director Keith Gordon’s latest film, The Singing Detective. Clever, original, beautifully lit, composed and framed, The Singing Detective is, more than anything else, a work of art. As I marveled at Gordon’s choice of camera angles and the way he seamlessly worked full Broadway-style lip-synced versions of ‘50s hits like "Mr. Sandman" and "At the Hop" into the film, I began to realize that The Singing Detective possessed a number of traits that I normally abhorred to see in movies. The direction of the plot is meandering at best and tends to jump around chronologically without much of a heads up to the viewer and the lack of information about the on-screen characters and their relationships with one another was, at times, particularly strained. But the unusual thing was, I didn’t care. My first thought was that I was being a hypocrite. Finally succumbing to the irrational, I cringed, believing I was about to enter the world of pretentious film criticism, right next to other critics who continually bash Adam Sandler for doing the same things that they love to see Woody Allen do. Then, sounding downright Carrie Bradshaw-esque, I began to wonder: could I consciously overlook the poor use of plot and chronology in this project, while chastisizing another film, like 21 Grams, for doing exactly the same thing? Yes. Because the context of the two projects is vastly different. Where 21 Grams is interested in being gritty and depressingly poignant, The Singing Detective works hard to be likable, enjoyable and artistic. Robert Downey Jr. stars in Gordon’s film as Dan Dark, a fiction writer with a bad case of psoriasis, a skin disease that speeds up the production of skins cells, producing thick, red, painful lesions across the effected areas. Dark’s case is one of the most severe cases doctors have seen. Unable to move much or do anything without physical pain, Dark is forced to enter the hospital, where he recesses into his mind, obsessively pouring over the plot of a would-be novel in his head. Weaving bits of reality into the story line, Dark (and consequently the viewer) is never quite sure what is taking place and what is imagined. As the film progresses and Dark begins to recover, his focus changes from writing the novel to understanding the meanings behind the hallucinations he’s been having. Stylistically, The Singing Detective is a gorgeous, sumptuous movie. Though set in the present day, Dark fancies himself a product of the fifties and often envisaged singing in a jazz band or dealing with criminals of the era. This allows Gordon a lot of opportunities to inject the project with playful dialogue and fifties’ style charisma. Entertaining, creative and phenomenally well acted by Downey and the nearly unrecognizable Mel Gibson, The Singing Detective is the rare artistic treat in Hollywood’s uncompromisingly commercial barrel. | |||||
