Avaliações do Metacritic

Carl Reiner's hit-or-miss film noir parody, a collection of gags that vary much too wildly in terms of timing and wit. All that hold this comedy together are a playful outlook and a conviction that detective stories are intrinsically funny, especially if the detective is as much of a blockhead as Ned Ravine.

Director Reiner (All of Me, Sibling Rivalry) takes -- ahem -- a stab at parodying those wacky ice-pick thrillers of the Nineties and barely breaks the skin.

What the movie doesn't have, besides too many laughs, is either the pungent style and sociology of true film noir, or the sheer yuppie desperation of the hard-core erotic thriller. Instead of being hard-boiled, it's over easy.

Too dopey to cut it as a theatrical release, but more knowingly and competently made than most of its straight-to-video analogues, this Carl Reiner-directed pastiche-parody of film noir occupies a lonely corner of video purgatory.

Lacking in both inspiration and ingenuity, it doesn't so much spoof the conventions of the genre as dumb down famous -- and in some cases, forgotten -- scenes from a slew of other movies.

Armand Assante, on the other hand, is one of the best movie actors of his generation. But he isn't very funny in Fatal Instinct.

The cast tries but the laughs simply aren't there, despite the filmmakers' apparent conviction that homages plus penis jokes equals wit.

A more pointed genre parody intent on proving there’s noir business like show business could’ve been ripping fun. But director Carl Reiner is more intent on offering Cliff’s Notes for VCR couch spuds than satire. It’s the kind of endlessly referential, toothless spoof that sticks an elbow in your side every 20 seconds or so: “Now we’re doing the ‘Body of Evidence’ candle wax scene! Recognize the funny-hats montage from ‘Sleeping With the Enemy’? Get it?”

Considering the degree to which Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct are already self-parodies, writer David O'Malley and director Carl Reiner don't have to do much to show how silly they are; in order to understand how silly this movie is, on the other hand, all you have to do is sit through it.

Small jokes are buried under elaborate setups. Sight gags are repeated to the point of exhaustion — a woman’s shoe steps in gum, then toilet paper, then . . . you get the point. Most painful of all, serious actors strain to be funny.