Passion projects are a dangerous game. Chris Pine has pooled his favours and cashed in those Hollywood paychecks and come out the other end with Poolman. What should be a spry and light comedy feature with dabbles of detective agency hijinks soon devolves spectacularly. A tale of subterfuge and double-crosses spawned out of some mad mixture between Bulworth and Inherent Vice. But the stoner-turned-detective activist comedy punches are loose on the flab of your average pool man and, as a result, this Pine-led and written piece is more an exercise in how much of his style you can take. With such an all-star cast there should be more to it than a Postal-like experience. Lucky for Pine, Postal stands as an irreverent counter-comedy. It just took a decade to get it to that point.
Whether time is kind to this oddball comedy is yet to be seen but the obsessive pool man at the heart of this does not strike as the ordinary charmer nor the eccentric fall guy. He is a man Pine would be if it were not for the rigorous standards set by the real world. A caravan-living dreamer with a desire to be bigger than the confines of his four moveable home walls provides Pine with an eternal optimist. A desire to pull at the threads which make for an optimistic life. Blindsided by belief, this is the route to revealing your dissatisfaction and Poolman tries its best to get there. But the infantile Darren Barrenman, whose life is barren of emotional responsibility, makes for a caricature-like lead. From its desire to fixate on Chinatown (not the message but the mood and attitude) to the lifeless characters, Poolman truly struggles.
Asinine conversation which is both Woody Allen-like in its neuroses but Uwe Boll in its commentary on culture. Neither works and DeVito is handling the bulk of it. Absurdity must deliver either a thrilling and well-developed world to enjoy or a fascinating character study whose representation can be used as a delicate understanding of the past and present. Neither occurs here but the Pine-led piece does have its charms, limited they may be. Poolman is ineffective in its frequent references but Pine becomes this unique, vaguely fascinating character of social do-gooding without the do-gooding. He is a social pariah and one who finds influence in the oddballs of community town halls and those microscopic government meetings. Portions of this are great fun but it is in brief moments, rather than as a whole, that Poolman works.
Pine tries very hard to make this work and, frankly, his sticking by his film makes it all the more adamant in its possible cult success later down the line. There is something to it, a little trick or two which must be conceded as Pine makes for an everyman director, trying his hand at blurry black rooms and divine aspirations. But they are aping already established ideas and films. Pine does not hide this. It is the biggest letdown Poolman has. Pine has tried his hand at something intense and interesting but the foundations of his work are built on reused pillars. A collapse is inevitable. But the falling apart, Barrenman would have us believe, is all part of the daily routine. Pick up those pieces, sift through the fragments. There is not much here that you have not seen before.
