vrijdag 21 maart 2014

Veronica Mars (2014)

Genre : Crime
Country : USA

Cast :
Kristen Bell : Veronica Mars
Enrico Colantoni : Keith Mars
Jason Dohring : Logan Echolls

Director :
Rob Thomas

Summary
Years after walking away from her past as a teenage private eye, Veronica Mars gets pulled back to her hometown - just in time for her high school reunion - in order to help her old flame Logan Echolls, who's embroiled in a murder mystery.

My opinion

A teenaged private eye. Trust me. I know how dumb that sounds.

It's not often that a movie starts to enervate me, but after a while this one got on my nerves. I could have guessed it when my wife first said enthusiastically that she recognized someone from "Bones." And after a while someone from "Grey's Anatomy". I'm not an avid fan of TV Series. First I hate to wait for the next episode. Second, you'll notice after a while it's really tedious and rewritten to the point of boredom because it's such a successful series. And third, these series aren't famous for their superb acting. Afterwards I scrolled through the curriculum of the cast and I came to the conclusion that most of them had a huge TV Series history. Well now I understand why I had that feeling all the time of watching a TV series. I had no idea that "Veronica Mars" initially was one (that's not difficult when you dislike them). It was just a ultra-super long episode of that TV series.

Several times I couldn't help comparing it to "Nancy Drew". It really looked like a teen story with a clever girl who actually could make it as a top lawyer but preferred to exchange it for a job as a "Private Investigator" in some city. I'm strongly convinced about the fact that such people who would do something like that, are scarce to find nowadays. If they would pile up all the cliches present in this movie and place this in front of the entrance of the film studio, this movie would have never been made because the entrance would be blocked. I had one sigh-moment after the other and my wife had to rub my neck with muscle relaxing ointment, because I was shaking my head all night out of amazement and disbelief. It was just waiting for the moment when the whole case was revealed and we discover who actually had done it and what was the motivation for doing it.

There were an awful lot of implausible things in it. If I was an employed policeman in this town where the film was made, I immediately went looking for another job out of shame. The intellectual level of this law enforcement was terribly low. Several clues were found by Veronica after a bit of logical and deep (not to deep though) thinking and asking around a bit. Things I suppose the authorities would discover. Veronica suddenly sees clues in photos and can transfer data from an iPad to a USB stick with help from certain people she just happens to know from the past. It looked like a "Emma" kids story: "Veronica M. goes to town and solves a crime.". Of course the results of her actions were that she lost the well-paid job, lost her perfect boyfriend because he could not longer bear the fact that she is playing "Nancy Drew" in her hometown and eventually she hooks up with her ex-boyfriend again. I honestly never could predict that !

It was a surprise that James Franco and Jamie Lee Curtis suddenly appeared in it, even though they had a meaningless role. Kristen Bell is good looking and together with Jason Dohring she plays a convincing role. Not top notch acting, but also not too annoying. The positive aspect of her role was her big mouth. She was a verbal bitch and used it to defend herself. Especially when she used that for the typical dumb high-school Barbies who think that the equator runs through their ass and think the world is lying at their feet. Those moments when she puts them in their place, first with her clever remarks and then with an effective punch in the face, were absolutely great and enjoyable.

It would have been better if I first read other opinions on this subject. I would have come to the conclusion that this is a spin-off of a television series. It's just an ordinary detective in the trend of "Columbo", only with actors who meet the ideal beauty image and don't smoke cigars. Also something I noticed. This was an almost "alcohol,drugs and sex"-free movie. Totally the opposite of "The Wolf of Wall Street".