Poolman (2024)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Shallow End

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Chris Pine's directorial debut Poolman tries to be a love-letter to Los Angeles, and in that regard, it manages a few sweet, weird moments, but mostly it's noisy, jumpy, and ill-paced.

Darren Barrenman (Pine) is a poolman who lives and maintains the pool at the Tahitian Tiki apartment complex in Los Angeles. He's happily dating Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and writes letters to Erin Brockovich every day. And he's best friends with his therapist, Diane (Annette Bening) and out-of-work filmmaker Jack (Danny DeVito). He attends daily city council meetings, fighting to make improvements to the city.

After accidentally assaulting a bailiff and spending the night in jail, he's bailed out by June Del Rey (DeWanda Wise), executive assistant for councilman Toronkowski (Stephen Tobolowsky). She asks his help in doing some detective work to uncover a corrupt scheme involving Toronkowski and a developer named Teddy Hollandaise (Clancy Brown). After watching Chinatown again for inspiration, Darren is on the case. But even he can't begin to guess just how far the corruption goes, and what kind of danger he's really in.

Poolman fares best when Pine — who is in virtually every scene — shares moments with actors of opposite temperaments, such as Tobolowsky in a dressing room or Brown in a severe, shadowy office. Pine tends to follow their leads and these scenes find a good rhythm. But mostly the movie consists of actors shouting over each other, everyone making a great deal of noise and no one listening. Any sense of comic timing is out the window in an absolute bombardment of dialogue and big, broad acting.

The movie pays homage to classic Los Angeles movies like Sunset Boulevard and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and especially Chinatown (the characters watch it on TV at one point), and it's hard not to notice that Pine's character resembles "The Dude" in The Big Lebowski. Calling attention to these superior movies was probably not the wisest idea, however.

Additionally, there's more than a bit of vanity on display here, as Pine finds every excuse to remove his shirt (his character even looks like Jesus in certain shots). Indeed, the movie it most resembles is another feature directing debut by another actor who played Captain Kirk, the hubris-wrecked Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Let's hope the terrific cast of players had a good time making this, because otherwise, Poolman is stuck in the shallow end.