Nada é o que Parece

This film is soo Cheesy! But it was soo much fun. No bad language, no sex, nudity, or gore. No woke agenda. Just a funny movie. There should be tons more like this. 😃

This film tells the story of a salesman who gets mistaken to be a private investigator. He is hired to investigate the disappearance of a famous computer game programmer. Hilarity ensues when he is clearly out of his depth for the increasingly complicated crime.

"No Clue" is really quite entertaining because the main character, Leo, is clearly unintelligent. His responses are silly for the situations he encounters, as he has no clue what he's doing. Yet the woman hiring him send to have no clue about his incompetence either. The whole premise is funny and at the same time suspenseful and mysterious. The mystery is maintained even through the numerous jokes. When the ending reveals what really happened, I think the plot is quite clever in making many characters suspects, but only one is the real crook. I enjoyed watching it.

In Canada, a woman named Kyra (Amy Smart) goes to the office of the middle-aged clumsy salesman Leo Falloon (Brent Butt) by mistake believing that he is a private detective. She hires him to help her to find her missing brother Milles Severeign and Leo is so spellbound by the blonde that he does not tell her that he is not who she is looking for. Leo decides to pose of private detective and he is involved in a complicated scheme of computer game corporations seeking high profits.

"No Clue" is a dark comedy with a good story that deserved a better lead actor. Brent Butt wrote a good screenplay but unfortunately he is neither funny nor pleasant on the screen. The resolution of the murder is not consistent with the character Leo that is not bright. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Nada É o que Parece" ("Nothing Is What Looks Like")

Despite starring (and being written by) Brent Butt, who was the star in the highly rated Canadian sitcom "Corner Gas", "No Clue" was only given a small theatrical release in Canada (and got a very tacky- looking poster to boot.) Watching the movie, it's pretty easy to see why the distributor was not very gung ho. It fails due to one big problem, that being that the movie simply isn't funny. At its best it just gets to be mildly cute, certainly never hilarious or even provoking mild chuckles out of the audience. Much of the humor is written to be pretty predictable and familiar.

Butt's screenplay certainly shoulders most of the blame for the unfunny nature of the movie, but Butt also stumbles in the lead role. His shtick of coming across as a somewhat dumb motormouth gets old very fast, and he quickly becomes somewhat irritating and annoying.

To top it off, while the movie thankfully does not have the tacky and cheap feeling of most other Canadian movies, it all the same has the look and feel of a television production instead of a theatrical movie.

Is there anything good to say about this movie? Well, unlike many Canadian films, it admits to being set in Canada and thankfully at the same time does not make a big deal about it. Though all the same, most Canadians will consider the movie as a whole yet another example of the poor state of the Canadian film industry.

I discovered Brent Butt's Corner Gas, Hiccups, and Corner Gas Animated just this year. Being in Texas, there's not a lot of Canadian programming that comes my way. No Clue is a fresh and funny take on the film noir genre. The "detective" isn't necessarily bumbling, he's just out of his depth / element. While I don't need my entertainment to be squeaky clean, it is refreshing to find something that makes me laugh without having to be offensive.