Spoilers herein.
The mystery is like no other narrative device because it challenges the viewer to a duel. You the viewer or reader are invited to outguess the detective character, the crook and even the writer. But since the created world depends on the writer, we count on them to `play fair.'
On the written page, there is nothing so modern, so engaging, so prone to experimentation as the mystery. It is remarkably malleable. But movie mysteries are something else: the eye is relatively unambiguous and that screws many of the basic mechanics of trickery. TeeVee mysteries are even worse, because that viewer is peremptorily lazy -- there can be no engagement.
So it is common in TeeVee and often in film to totally surprise at the end. Sometimes the result is savory (think `The Others,' or `Usual Suspects'), but mostly it is just junk storytelling. Here is a wonderfully self-aware script that uses all the bad habits of film mystery to give us a movie about the writing of film mysteries, those same bad habits.
The performances are comically stereotyped. But here it is intended. There are some funny straight jokes here, but the much funnier ones are the self-referential ones.
The mystery is like no other narrative device because it challenges the viewer to a duel. You the viewer or reader are invited to outguess the detective character, the crook and even the writer. But since the created world depends on the writer, we count on them to `play fair.'
On the written page, there is nothing so modern, so engaging, so prone to experimentation as the mystery. It is remarkably malleable. But movie mysteries are something else: the eye is relatively unambiguous and that screws many of the basic mechanics of trickery. TeeVee mysteries are even worse, because that viewer is peremptorily lazy -- there can be no engagement.
So it is common in TeeVee and often in film to totally surprise at the end. Sometimes the result is savory (think `The Others,' or `Usual Suspects'), but mostly it is just junk storytelling. Here is a wonderfully self-aware script that uses all the bad habits of film mystery to give us a movie about the writing of film mysteries, those same bad habits.
The performances are comically stereotyped. But here it is intended. There are some funny straight jokes here, but the much funnier ones are the self-referential ones.