Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday September 20th, 2025
Aunt, A u n t
This film: It doesn’t know what it wants to say, doesn’t say much of it, and even that it doesn’t say with it’s whole chest. This should be terrible and I can imagine some people bouncing off this completely.
But I still recommend it because it has a sense of freedom. Like everyone has a bunch of ideas that sound interesting so have a go at making them work. See what’ll happen.
Take for instance Margaret Qualley’s lead character, Honey O’Donahue, who is simultaneously both the hardboiled gumshoe and the femme fatale. Does it work? Absolutely! She’s magnificent, ably abetted by a Barbarella paced series of costume changes, every single one of which is just *chef’s kiss*.
But also only kind of. The plot kind of burbles along, things happen which criss-cross the paths of the ensemble cast, but nothing drives it. So even though she’s magnificent, she doesn’t get to do much of significance.
Every character has that kind of twist to it. What if we took that character from film noir but played it like this instead. The whole cast is great, but special mention goes to Charlie Day who plays the archetypal sexist, incompetent police detective who makes the P.I.’s life difficult. Except he only hits on her because he knows she get’s a kick out of knocking him back; knows full damn well she’s better at the job than he is so keeps giving her leads; and is only a pain in the ass when he really needs to be sure that something’s going to stick.
It’s fun. It’s funny.
The whole thing wraps up in less than ninety minutes and doesn’t amount to much. I really wanted more from it. But, having said that, I would love to watch another ninety minutes of these characters.
