The film industry is still recovering from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the casualties of the year in which theaters were mostly vacant is that there are a number of strong films released in 2020 that simply didn’t get the audience that they deserved. Even if they eventually made their way on to VOD, it’s been proven that films tend to do better on streaming if they had something of a theatrical release first. One of those films that deserved more was The Kid Detective, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprisingly upsetting dark comedy that satirizes the hardboiled detective genre by weaponizing nostalgia for children’s mystery stories. It’s a great showcase for Adam Brody; while he has given many great performances on television, even earning Emmy nominations for his Netflix series Nobody Wants This, which is up for Best Comedy at this year’s Emmys, Brody has his best cinematic role in The Kid Detective.
Brody stars as Abe Applebaum, a former child prodigy who solved local mysteries when he was still in grade school. Abe was celebrated and treated like a celebrity throughout the town, but he was severely traumatized after failing to solve the mystery of a close friend who had gone missing. The film picks up with the older, disheveled, and unreasonably cynical version of Abe who is still coasting on all the privileges that the town of Willowbrook gave him when he was a kid, despite the fact that his current detective business tends to take on low-scale cases that don’t pose him a significant challenge. The Kid Detective is an interesting spin on the anti-hero redemption story, as it involves Abe having to prove that his childhood skills were not anomalies, and that he has it in himself to become a real problem-solver.
‘The Kid Detective’ Is Sharp Satire With Dark Comedy
The Kid Detective is a satire of classic children’s mystery series like Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, or Nate the Great, and it makes fun of some of the assumptions that these stories made about their protagonists. Abe gained notoriety for solving cases relating to school fundraisers and missing pets, but is then suddenly involved in serious investigations where he was made a consultant by the police. When he has grown up and is approached by the teenager Caroline (Yellowjackets star Sophie Nélisse) to investigate the murder of her boyfriend Patrick Chang, Abe initially assumes that all he needs to do is to make her feel better, as he doesn’t suspect any foul play. However, it’s after learning more about Caroline that Abe realizes that the case is actually serious, and that he has bitten off more than he can chew in agreeing to solve it.
This is a twist that helps the film make salient dramatic points, while also giving it some dark comedy; while there is something heartfelt in seeing Abe try to solve a high school murder after failing to do so as a kid, he’s also completely ill-suited for the responsibilities of a real detective, made evident when he has to console Patrick’s parents.
The Kid Detective offers a deglamorized look at the detective lifestyle because Abe is completely disrespected by everyone in the town, and isn’t even taken seriously by his parents (Jonathan Whittake and Wendy Crewson). Many of his stakeouts require him to stay in the same situation for hours at a time, often in uncomfortable positions. While this makes Abe a sympathetic character because he is trying to do the right thing when no one supports him, he’s also a narcissist who plasters photos of his past achievements all over the walls of his office. One of the funniest recurring gags is Abe going to the local ice cream shop every day to pick up a free cone; while he was awarded a “lifetime pass for free ice cream” when he was a kid, no one expected him to keep using it 20 years later.
‘The Kid Detective’ Is the Perfect Use of Adam Brody
The Kid Detective authentically replicates the atmosphere of a small town because it offers roles to many up-and-coming and underrated actors, but it is hard to imagine anyone but Brody in the leading role. Abe is a character who is inherently charismatic, and has attempted to delude himself by coasting on ego and abusing drugs as a means of feeling relaxed; it’s a surprisingly thoughtful exploration of addiction that avoids trying to make a point about it. There’s also a genius within Brody’s casting, as he was himself a former teen star who got his breakthrough with The O.C., which draws parallels to Abe. Brody also has a very self-deprecating sense of humor, and is appropriately able to portray a character in a perpetual state of arrested development.
The Kid Detective could have easily been a complete spoof that serves as an outright parody of investigative mysteries, but the film goes to surprisingly dark places in looking at the lies children are told when they are growing up, and the consequences that ripple into the future when they grow to confront them. Although there are many great physical gags throughout, the film ends with one of the most striking final shots of the decade, and one that crystallized the morbid comedy. If The Nice Guys has gone down in history as the great underrated and underseen mystery comedy of 2010s, then The Kid Detective deserves to have the same reputation for the 2020s.
