Poolman (2024)

Pinecraft

How would you rank the 2010s Hollywood Handsome Chrises?

Here’s my ranking, from worst to best:

4. Chris Evans

The only one of the four whose casting makes me less interested in a film. To be fair, he’s been good plenty of times, like when he co-starred with Ana de Armas in Knives Out. He’s also been bad plenty of times, like when he co-starred with Ana de Armas in Ghosted. He’s the most boring of the Chrises as far as I’m concerned.

3. Chris Hemsworth

Australians are almost automatically more interesting than Americans, and Hemsworth is no exception. His turn as Thor is one of the most fun in the MCU, but the body of his work is just not deep enough for him to place any higher. The work of his body, on the other hand…

(Fun fact: I had completely forgotten that there is more than one Hemsworth until looking it up right now. There’s three of them? Really? I guess it was not him but his brother who co-starred in the Hunger Games movies. Which one married Miley Cyrus?)

2. Chris Pine

He and Hemsworth are the only two who seem like they’d be fun to hang with. Pine might be off-puttingly handsome in a way the other Chrises aren’t, but he makes up for it with a more diverse and unpredictable filmography. (That happened almost naturally, of course, because he didn’t spend 10 years of his life churning out MCU sequels.) Between Wish and now Poolman, I’ve come to realize he’s just a big, goofy theater kid at heart, not a traditional “movie star.”

1. Chris Pratt

Having him at the top of the list is probably a controversial take at this point given that no actor has more worn out his welcome with cinephiles than the omnipresent Pratt, now synonymous with the Hollywood content machine. But I’d argue there’s a good reason he is so frequently cast when “everyman” charm is needed. He has it in spades. Now that he’s a billion dollar studio asset, it’s easy to forget that he gave one of the funniest sitcom performances of the past twenty years as Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec. He completely carried the unlikely success of Guardians of the Galaxy movies. He makes the stuff he’s in better. Koopas! (Under no circumstances would I want to “get a beer” with present-day Pratt, however.)

Anyway, Poolman is the oddball directing debut of Pine. He also stars and co-writes the script. The result is a very wacky film: a hardboiled stoner noir that so shamelessly wants to be The Big Lebowski that its main character even drinks a signature milk-based cocktail. It carries serious funny-ish energy and has been the victim of some of the most vicious pans of the year. And the hate has been piled on a bit too thick, I’d say. I mean, Poolman isn’t quite a good film, but it always errs on the side of having more daffy and inscrutable personality rather than less. I’d rather watch a lark like this than a over-manufactured blockbuster like, hey, Ghosted.

Pine puts his comedy filmmaking on easy mode with his cast: Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Clancy Brown, and Stephen Tobolowsky each play key roles. All are indisputable film-improvers, all are naturally funny, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some or all of them did some serious improv throughout the course of Poolman’s filming. DeVito in particular charms as an aspiring filmmaker with some hysterical riffs and monologues.

The film follows Darren Barrenman (Pine) (yes, the names in this are really bad), a pool cleaner with long hair and short shorts who lives in a trailer in LA. He gets sucked into investigating a political corruption scheme involving a real estate water conspiracy. You might recall that as the approximate plot of Chinatown. Poolman is a parody of Chinatown inasmuch as saying out loud “this is sure like Chinatown” three to five times constitutes parody.

The real subject of spoof in Poolman is not any film or story trope but of the image of a free-spirited California liberal: Darren is so subsumed in therapy talk, he can’t even get mad when his girlfriend (Leigh) cheats on him because he’s happy she’s now fulfilled. He’s a Brene Brown-core optimist. He worships empowered, enlightened figures, writing daily letters to Erin Brockovich as a journaling exercise. (Imagine setting that character detail up and not even roping in a Julia Roberts cameo.) His politics are deeply felt but even more deeply performative; he waits until the camera is rolling to throw a weekly tantrum in a town council meeting by railing against NIMBYism and poorly-designed bus routes.

The whole film comes across as a try-hard inside joke that you’re on the outside of. This is equal parts annoying and endearing — annoying because there’s nothing less funny than flop sweat of someone working too hard to land a weak punchline; endearing because everyone here is visibly having fun and deeply invested in the material. You can’t manufacture infectious happiness.

Darren’s fellow investigator is June Del Ray (DeWanda Wise), the film’s femme fatale. June is a bit underwritten, but Wise sizzles. I loved her in this, as much as some of the more familiar names. I will be more surprised if she doesn’t break out at some point in the next few years than if she does.

I leave Poolman not especially convinced that Pine should be writing and directing movies, but that his energies should be harnessed for comedy more than they have been. More D&D, less Don’t Worry Darling. Hire Shane Black to make a buddy comedy starring him and Ayo Edibiri. Put him in a fat suit and have him play a cursing bigwig like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder. Hell, cast him as Fletch. He’s a good Chris.

Is It Good?

Nearly Good (4/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.