“Poolman” Review

The meandering mystery of Poolman is a comedy that relies on the stumbling of its protagonist. It’s a mildly ridiculous take on Chinatown with an unlikely seeker who watched it too closely. We all know that one friend who watches a conspiracy theory movie and they suddenly start getting paranoid about seeing the number 23 everywhere they look. They’re fun for a bit, but their mileage may vary depending on how wild their paranoia is to spiral into absurdity. In the case of Chris Pine’s directorial debut, he doesn’t quite find the right groove in his hunt for that trippy quest of corruption and connections.

Pine plays the down-on-his-luck Darren Barrenman, a Los Angeles pool cleaner trying to find purpose in his life. Desiring more than a carefree life cleaning the pool of an apartment complex, he takes inspiration from Erin Brockovich to be an active activist at city council meetings, even if it’s for the most arbitrary concerns about bus schedules. His odd obsessions strain his relationship with his girlfriend, Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and it’s up to Darren to either improve himself or unearth a major conspiracy in his city. Since conspiracies are more fun, he manages to stumble onto a doozy of an investigation involving real estate and water. Having just watched Chinatown, Darren’s mind goes into detective mode, amazed at the tropes coming to life.

There’s a solid comedic cast at play that does their past to draw laughs from their corners of this scattershot mystery. Danny DeVito and Annette Bening have their moments as Darren’s paternal figures of the apartment owners, Jack and Dianne. Dianne indulges Darren’s theories with her psychiatry skills while Jack is lost in his own world of documentary filmmaking and sitcom deals. There are some quirks to Stephen Tobolowsky, seeming to play the straight-man of councilman Toronkowski, only to later be revealed as a drag star of a Golden Girls production. DeWanda Wise does her best as the femme fatale, John Ortiz makes the best of a character called Dirk Pfumpter, and Clancy Brown and Ray Wise flex their grumpy muscles with ease for a plot that requires them to point out how dumb Darren can be.

A film like this can only work if it has a certain weird vibe that keeps flowing throughout and it sadly doesn’t find a flow. The picture bounces between stammering conversations of political intrigue to surreal visions of a talking iguana, with Chris Pine hopping through it all in his new-age mindset. But every character ends up being an island in this farce, making it hard to care about the progression. As much as I love Danny DeVito’s acting here, his performance is so singular that it feels like he wandered on from another set. Consider that when Darren has a breakdown after witnessing a murder, Jack talks over his crying to tell Dianne the good news about a new sitcom gig. While consoling Darren, Dianne also has to show exuberance for success amid tragedy. Rarely does this film reach a stream-of-consciousness strangeness when you can practically hear the buttons being pushed for a forced dose of levity or silliness.

Poolman has all the ingredients of a surreal mystery comedy, but it never comes together as successfully as the solved case. There are bits and pieces of better movies strewn throughout this film as it mashes in characters and stoner-level logic for cracking the conspiracy. I can only imagine that Pine thought he was delivering a buffet of the bizarre in his constantly swirling but it only comes off like a messy table of absurdity, where you have to pick and sort through it all to find the funnier moments.