The Kid Detective is a dark comedy mystery film directed by Evan Morgan. The film asks the question what would happen to the child detective after they grew up? What would Nancy Drew be like at 40? What happens when the Hardy Boys move out and get married? We see a once respected kid detective (Adam Brody), now have to adjust to being a lacklustre detective in a grown-up world, but can a serious new case change that?
I enjoyed the gimmick of this film for the first ten minutes…. after that not so much. The joke of but hey he is basically still just a kid detective but in a man’s body quickly becomes tiresome and the film’s gimmick (which it is probably proud of because no other films have really done it), starts to work against it (this is why it has not been done before).
The darker humour doesn’t really work for me. Dark comedy is even more hit and miss than regular comedy as people have lines as to what is and isn’t okay to joke about in their opinion, as such this film had more of an uphill battle. However, I don’t think any of the jokes are particularly risqué, rather I think that is the problem: for a dark comedy film this is incredibly tame.
Brody himself is enjoyable, I am a fan and it is nice to see him get centre stage and he does make the most of it, sadly the film around him is deeply average.
Pros.
Brody
The premise for the first 5 minutes
Cons.
The premise after that
The jokes don’t work
It is painfully dull
2/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 