Trixie

This movie has grown on me immensely. The first time I saw it, it struck me poorly. I didn't like the plot or characters. I've seen it twice since then. I was surprised to find how funny it was a second time. Truth be told, Trixie is the sweetest detective ever written. She's obsessed with the truth and lives by no other code, solving the case almost by accident. There is a sexy all star cast to back her up and they all play magnificently. The real joke of the movie is Trixie's ability to get well known sayings wrong, which is explained by her injury as a child from a bowling ball on the head (mentioned very quickly in a hospital scene). She says things like, "Stop right there where you are in your tracks!" Her timing is perfect and Ms. Watson's performance is endearing. Good show, all around.

Emily Watson is a charmer: she's completely naive and innocent, but then again she's not so naive, and maybe not so innocent. She seems to understand nothing, but then she's the only one who understands it all.

Watson's tour-de-force is in playing Trixie completely straight, malapropisms and all. Yeah, the twisted idioms get tired after a while, at least until a funnier one shows up.

Definitely for art house movie lovers and not the megaplex.

I had heard that the malapropism of Emily Watson's character would begin to wear after a while. Not for me, it was like watching a seriously deadpan Gracie Allen at work.

The key to the film (which covers some of the same territory as "Fargo" and contains a few references to the movie) is the realization that it is not only Watson's character whose utterances are ridiculous, but those of the major characters, but Red's description of his relationship to the dead woman and Senator Avery's comments to the reporters show a similar dislocation with reality and sense. We start by realizing that her comments are off the wall, but they turn out to be nothing compared to the double-speak that we have become accustomed to coming out of the mouths of politicians and developers.

The ending is a bit harum-scarum but overall a very enjoyable movie. The plot twists at the end weakened it, although they were very much in keeping with the noir genre.

And, no, he would NOT have liked this movie. Most people obviously didn't. My sides ached. I know most people didn't "get" it. Look at the mess of categories it is in. You cannot pigeonhole this movie. It is an original.

I do understand. I have seen Altman movies that I didn't think were funny, either. But this one hit a home run right up my alley. Not funny? Well, at least it's not a tired, old cliché. I had to get the tissues out because I was laughing so hard I was crying. See? We mix metaphors all the time.

But these clichés have never been mixed so well. How did Nick Nolte, Lesley Ann Warren and Brittany Murphy and the rest of the cast keep straight faces? A whole movie FULL of straight men. The only one who knew he was funny was Nathan Lane ... and he was playing a comedian ... that most people didn't think was funny! How ironic is that?

I just want to say to everyone involved in making this movie: Thank you! I laughed so hard I ruptured my catachresis.

Good movie. Odd, off balance, imaginative, agitating - everything that an ultra-passive braincell-hybernating spoonfed-explosion stale-cool critics-approved movie pencil-envies. My opinion.