Writer/director Evan Morgan’s debut feature-length film feels like a rarity these days: a true hidden gem. It might never have blipped my radar were it not for a niche (though not unpopular) YouTube channel and the lone recommendation of a good friend. Couple good word-of-mouths, along with a rental price on Amazon as cheap as a trip to Redbox minus gas, and you almost can’t afford not to watch it.
Morgan’s The Kid Detective is reminiscent of another suburban-noir debut, Rian Johnson’s Brick. Though where the latter creates a “cool,” “grown-up” world within a high school setting, the former focuses on what it actually means to grow up and be a grown-up.
Adam Brody (The O.C., Ready or Not) stars as Abe Applebaum, a once-beloved kid detective who practiced out of his treehouse until success solving such high-profile cases as The Case of the Missing Fundraiser Money and The Mystery of the Water Tower Vandals landed him an office funded by the town and a lifetime of free ice cream at the sweet shop. But when his assistant, the mayor’s daughter, goes missing, Abe’s inability to solve the case slowly sours the promising wunderkind, turning him into a washed-up alcoholic in his 30s solving such low-stakes mysteries as Widow Gulliver’s Missing Cat. That is, until a high school girl hires Abe to solve the mystery of her murdered boyfriend.
Though not entirely new (Mystery Team with Donald Glover shares a similar idea), the conceit of a 32-year-old burnout employing the same teenage tactics he used to solve cases of candy theft to a real case of murder carries the film a long way. Brody is pathetic and self-pitying as adult Abe, but also overly confident in his sleuthing skills. Morgan’s direction and darkly comic script make every interview with every colorful suspect both an homage and a send-up of the hard-boiled detective genre, though never veering into irreverence. And maybe most importantly, every setup has a satisfying pay-off, from the most insignificant running jokes to the main mystery of the movie; the attention to detail is impeccable.
As well as being technically taut, the darn film manages to sneak in a rather poignant theme to boot. Morgan and Brody delight in the absurdity of their “adult kid detective,” but they also treat it seriously enough to explore the very real and relatable causes behind Abe’s arrested development, culminating in an ending that at first feels out of left field but is both earned and effective. Like any good mystery, there’s more than meets the eye to The Kid Detective.
