Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie – *

Handsome: A Netflix Murder Mystery (Jeff Garlin, 2017)

Global Acquisition – Comedy/Mystery

 

Handsome opens with a bold artistic decision. Actor Steven Weber, playing himself for the moment, climbs out of a pool and announces to the camera that he will be playing the murderer in the film that follows. If you think that opening these gestures of breaking the fourth-wall and revealing the mystery in a film whose very title implies it is a mystery portend a bold, experimental and cutting-edge comedy, you’d be sadly mistaken. Instead director/writer/producer and star Jeff Garlin has simultaneously ruined the mystery aspects of the film and shown that he thinks he is much cleverer than he actually is. Instead of a bold and witty comedy, what we are actually in for is 80 minutes that feel more like 4 hours in one of the worst comedies available as a Netflix original movie.

From this inauspicious start, the rest of the film doesn’t get any better. Once you purposefully remove “mystery” from a comedy-mystery, you better at least provide a lot of laughs. These never arrive aside from the odd one-liner from Garlin or his deadpan reaction to the crazy characters he is surrounded by. He is a natural comedian, really, and every time you find one of these laughs, you can’t help but lament what a lost opportunity this film was.

There are a number of jokes that just don’t work for various reasons including Scozzari’s (Natasha Lyonne) supposedly inappropriate libido, Handsome’s boss Lt. Tucker (Amy Sedaris) supposedly inappropriate libido (yep, horny women are ridiculous the film says again and again), the weird group of Japanese tourists traveling with their Japanese rabbi and the neighbor’s campy preteen son, and so on. The film is such a complete trainwreck that is difficult to pinpoint exactly what went wrong here as it seems to be an all-encompassing half-assedness (in writing and performance) when it comes to plotting and coming up with comedy. It is not that any other aspect of the film is particularly polished – cinematography and production design, for example, are equally half-baked – it’s just these elements are the most painfully obviously bad.

In theory, I loved the idea of Handsome. Netflix could really do with a Perry Mason/Columbo-type light crime fiction movie franchise. These were a staple of American television that has more or less disappeared in recent years. Jeff Garlin is a genuinely funny guy and you can easily imagine him fitting the mold of the sloppy (in appearance and in his personal life) but brilliant detective. The light comic tone could also mark a difference from contemporary television’s insistence on the dark and tortured detective solving unspeakably horrible crimes. But even light crime fiction requires some investment of time and energy, both of which seemed to be lacking here.

 

Netflix Tendencies

Netflix Stars

Natasha Lyonne is here in part to draw in fans of Orange is the New Black. She also appeared in Girlfriend’s Day and would later go on to appear in A Futile and Stupid Gesture and star in the Netflix original series Russian Doll.

Pointless Cameos

Kaley Cuocco appearing in the final minutes of this movie is about as pointless as cameos come. From the ways in which her scene is played, it seems like Garlin was going for another “meta” joke, but like all the other ones in the film, it flopped…badly.