Poolman Review: Chris Pine's Chinatown-Inspired Neo-Noir Bellyflops [TIFF 2023]

Chris Pine is one of our best currently working actors, a performer who understands his assignments, capable of adding sincerity to both ridiculous genre roles like Edgin the Bard in the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie or Steve Trevor in "Wonder Woman," while also delivering gripping dramatic performances in films like "Hell or High Water." Now, he's adding director to his set of skills with his feature directorial debut, "Poolman," a neo-noir comedy about a pool cleaner uncovering a vast conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, bellyflops almost as soon as it starts. The mystery is a convoluted mess, clearly attempting to marry the intrigue of "Chinatown" with the escalating chaos of a Coen Brothers movie while failing to make things compelling, all while the wacky humor falls flat. This is a movie with a great cast of comedic talent, including Danny DeVito and Stephen Tobolowsky, yet there's nothing particularly funny here. Instead, "Poolman" ends up full of details that feel too redundant and reminiscent of better movies, including Chris Pine's long-haired, bearded Zen master, who becomes too much of a rip-off of The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" to make much of an impression.

When we first meet him, Pine's pool cleaner character, Darren, performs a work ritual with the elegance of a ballet dancer, meticulously checking the pH levels of the pool in his apartment block while listening to "Flower Duet" from the opera "Lakmé" on his portable CD player before performing a choreographed cleaning. He cares deeply about his job, his friends — who include quasi-girlfriend Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), his therapist (Annette Bening) and her husband, washed-up movie director Jack (Danny DeVito) — and the city of Los Angeles, routinely attending city council meetings to give detailed presentations on public transport improvement.

Things change for Darren — a hopeless conspiracy theorist who gets ideas for a proposed Los Angeles trolley system from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" — when a femme fatale (DeWanda Wise) asks him for his help in uncovering a conspiracy involving the council president (Tobolowski), the stealing of water, and corrupt businessmen.

"Poolman" tries to be not just a love letter to the city of Los Angeles, but a love letter to movies about the city, with direct references to every great crime L.A. movie, from "Chinatown," to "The Long Goodbye" — characters mention the films, Darren literally watches "Chinatown" on VHS, and virtually every character in the film is somehow related to Hollywood, with most characters having backgrounds in acting. 

The problem is that the film has little more to offer than these references. After the first 10 minutes, the "Chinatown" meets "Big Lebowski" schtick wears off, and the rest of "Poolman" is little more than a stretched-out "SNL" skit that wears its concept too thin. The mystery of Pine and Ian Gotler's script is convoluted without being surprising or interesting, with every character speaking in riddles that lead nowhere. 

Worse yet, despite a great ensemble of actors and characters that act like cartoons, none of them are particularly funny. Pine embodies his Zen pool cleaner to great effect, but there is little substance to the character other than, well, he's played by Chris Pine. If there's one saving grace is that "Poolman" looks rather good, with the production design finding cool ways to portray Los Angeles and its weird characters — Darren's wardrobe, his short shorts in particular, do a lot of the heavy lifting in presenting an image of who this guy is. But none of this is enough to make the movie float.

/Film Rating: 5 out of 10