OVP: Knives Out (2019)

Film: Knives Out (2019)
Stars: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer
Director: Rian Johnson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I love Clue.  I know that like everyone loves Clue, but I LOVE Clue.  I like everything about Clue, and not just the movie (which I've seen more than any other film, once watched with my brother I think every day for a month-for two cinephile brothers, I think that's the only film we ever did something like that with, and that includes Disney films, and have a poster of it in my basement).  I collect Clue board games; I have 20 versions of the game in my hobby room closet, as well as three knockoff mystery games (13 Dead End Drive, I see you), and am hoping to make it 21 this Christmas as I have "Clue Guess Who" prominently featured at the top of my Christmas list.  I've read all of the Clue books, watched the Clue VCR game, have the Clue Christmas ornament, I buy the Clue board game chocolate every year that Target has it...I love Clue.  And as a result, I'm about as good of a candidate for something like Knives Out as you can find-a silly murder mystery with a large, talented ensemble cast is exactly what gets me to a movie theater.  Even with a plethora of more plausible Oscar contenders out (though kudos on the trio of Globe nominations!), I couldn't resist last week when I had a two hour window to go and catch Rian Johnson's latest in theaters.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not, of course, Clue, but it's obvious that Johnson has had a similar adoration for the franchise.  We start with Harlan Thrombey (Plummer), a wealthy mystery novelist, dying of what appears to be suicide in the opening moments of the film.  He had just finished celebrating his birthday party, one that had quite a bit of calamity with his family, and this opened the door for Benoit Blanc (Craig, sporting a ridiculous Southern accent), a noted detective, to be hired by an anonymous figure to investigate what could be a murder.  The film hosts a variety of suspects, from driven businesswoman Linda (Curtis), Harlan's favorite child, to her husband Richard (Johnson), who is having an affair, to his less successful son Walt (Shannon) who is mad that his father is driving him out of the business.  Add in a failed "Goop"-style guru daughter-in-law Joni (Collette) and a spoiled playboy grandson Ransom (Evans), and about the only person you don't suspect is Marta (de Armas), Harlan's nurse & caretaker.  Which means, of course, that Marta is both guilty and we're about to find out why she's guilty.

The best parts of Knives Out are arguably the parts I liked the least while watching it, because I am a mystery fan at heart, and love figuring out the clues as I'm going along.  We find out about a third of the way through what "actually" happened (it's a mystery-there's going to be a twist eventually) with Marta mixing up the morphine vile with Harlan's medication, thus accidentally killing him, and depriving her of her inheritance (Harlan decided to leave all of the money to his caretaker, cutting his family out of the will as a result).  We then see the steps that Marta will take to keep Benoit from finding out, knowing that if she had anything to do with Harlan's death, she'll lose the fortune which will go to Harlan's greedy & unworthy family.  As a result, this becomes more of a thriller than a mystery, as we're meant to take on the role of Marta as an audience rather than Benoit.

Upon reflection, this change in format generally works.  Johnson upends the mystery genre by giving us what we think is the answer, in the process showing what it's like to be an unreliable narrator, but in doing so the ending and the humor don't really resonate by putting someone as morally upstanding as Marta so central to the story.  The movie's best parts should be Curtis, Stanfield, and Collette, all having a blast with their characters, but they're forced into the sidelines to focus on sweet-as-pie Marta and over-acting Benoit, and since the only character whom we spend enough time with and is dynamic enough to be the eventual culprit is Evans' Ransom, we know eventually that it'll be revealed that he's the killer (by switching the labels on the bottles).

The film is fun, no question, but the entire time I saw it I kept thinking "this should be more fun."  It runs too long, isn't snappy enough outside of the initial interrogation sequences, and because it takes away the enjoyment of solving the mystery, it doesn't make us vested into the stories of the eccentric relatives.  As a result, we get relatively two-dimensional performances from people capable of so much more, and while de Armas has ability, she's kind of boring as Marta when you keep wanting to go back to the fun promised in the trailer & the movie's opening chapters.