I honestly did not know what to expect from The Kid Detective when I saw the poster pop online. I was hoping it would be a Canadian Canadian movie, not a shameful attempt at emulating an American movie; no offense to my homies Yves Simoneau & Erik Canuel, but if you wanna do American then move down south (to be fair Simoneau did…). And I have to say, my hopes were fulfilled far enough to cover my lack of expectation.
Abe Applebaum, played by the very underrated Adam Brody, used to be a prodigy in his small town for his premature deducting skills. Before he could even drive he already had his private detective agency complete with a downtown office where, for a quarter, he would solve kid-level mysteries. But after a teen girl disappeared and teen Abe failed to solve such a real case, his life went sideways, and adult Abe now 32, still clings to his amateur-sleuth practice while the world has moved on. When a teenager ends up stabbed 17 times and his girlfriend comes to Abe for answers, can he finally grow up enough to be the man he dreamed to be as a kid and solve all that needs to be solved?
Right off the bat the movie strikes the viewer for NOT being striking; American audiences will see in it a patched-up TV pilot that failed to find a series order, Canadians will see a character study that cynically uses comedy to paint a picture of childhood trauma. Because a trauma is what Abe truly has to deal with; an entire town enabled him to live out a fantasy, then shoved at him the very loud crash of reality. A very masterful restraint from headliner Brody skillfully avoids clichés of a disheveled & pathetic PI while exploring why they became such clichés. After a teen informant sends Abe a wild goose chase, he comes back with a trouncing so awkward and uptight even Bogey must have smiled from the grave.
Neither a thriller nor a comedy, the film offers great -if simple- moments of pathos that surprisingly remain while suddenly exploding into a dark climax. It matters little how many Ex Machinas it took for older Abe to fulfill younger Abe’s promise, once he does solve the case it neither feels like victory nor defeat; it feels like coming head-to-head with the consequences of pain too-long buried. In that, this very humble, low-cost movie shines above any that copped-out of being released in a year filled with nothing BUT anxiety: PTSD isn’t reserved for battlefield soldiers, it affects everyone who lives through a trauma, and letting a child put the weight of the world on his own shoulders leaves him with deep scars.
A very comfortable cast of players surround the once-teen heartthrob; a growing Sophie Nelisse (who broke-out in Oscar darling The Book Thief) as Abe’s latest client, a gorgeously-ageing Wendy Crewson as Abe’s overprotective mother, and respectable veteran Peter MacNeill in a performance that left me downright shaken. All of them shine in their acting choice to let the real star shine; Adam Brody, in an ironically sober tour de force (his character is always drinking or snorting yet never feels like a drunkard or junkie) carries the whole thing solidly on his shoulders.
I couldn’t help being reminded of investigation dramedies that Canadian Television does so well yet rarely does anymore, where a character resolves their lives alongside a mystery, like Danger Bay, Seeing Things, The Edison Twins or Due South. Which is probably why so many will invoke the aforementioned feeling of it looking like an aborted small screen project. But I do invite any viewer to watch it the way I did: no expectation, and hope it’s good. Because it is.
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