comment #1

richard crawford says ...

Altman's Long Goodbye is a masterpiece. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is not in the same league, but it is a lot of fun.

comment #2

oddDuck says ...

I agree, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was definitely a good time, due almost entirely in part to the three leads, especially Michelle Monaghan, who was hot and funny and charming and sexy and I have a big crush on. But the script? And the narration? Kinda lame and pretentious.

comment #3

Pete Zha says ...

Um, this movie needs smart movie folks like yourselves to recommend it, not step on its throat. Black's movie is certainly everthing and the kitchen sink, but it never stops delivering the goods. Performances, dialogue, and the thing is just pretty to look at. I really hope Black is back for good. Cinema really benefits from his pen, I think. I say this as a whole-hearted fan of "The Long Kiss Goodnight", "The Last Boyscout", and "Lethal Weapon", by the way. "Kiss Kiss" is his messy masterpeice, however. A wannabe cool movie that's cool. People will love it for a long time.

comment #4

Greg says ...

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is awesome. So what if it flaunts a hipper-than-thou attitude? That's better than a dumber-than-thou attitude that's evident even in a movie I kind of liked such as "The Wedding Crashers." KKBB made me laugh, has great performances, a nice film noir look, and it held together beautifully. Way off base on this one.

comment #5

ArchiveGuy says ...

KKBB was indeed fun for a while (in a wholly self-conscious kind of way), and Downey & Kilmer made a very likable team, but by the end, the movie has hopelessly become the kind of POS cop-buddy film it was so archly ridiculing. Infusing a little meta-humor doesn't change the fact that the end is a too-clever mess (and a complete cop-out to boot, re: Kilmer). Potentially promising from a new director, but I'm not convinced Black (who's been around the block) has really changed his spots. Yet.

comment #6

Colin says ...

Okay, but the real question is when is The Monster Squad coming to DVD?

comment #7

akabob2002 says ...

"Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang" is excellent. Okay, maybe not in the same league as Altman's "The Long Goodbye" but then they are working opposite sides of the street. "The Long Goodbye" is from the more literary minded, though certainly of pulp origins, Raymond Chandler; while "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" is a take off on the cheap paperback P.I. thrillers of the '60's. "The Long Goodbye" wasn't exactly warmly embraced when it was released. By all means if you missed it check out "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" on DVD. They'd make an excellent double feature at the New Beverly.

comment #8

Muck says ...

Ironic how Jeff complains of a movie trying to act hipper than it really was. KKBB was one of the most entertaining movies of last year.

comment #9

Dixon Steele says ...

KISS KISS was enjoyable enough, but suffered from being what the Brits call "too clever by half".

A few too many beats of Shane Black thinking "aren't you impressed how smart I am?"

comment #10

vik says ...

If nothing else, KKBB needs support to encourage Black to keep working. His dialogue is too clever? I'm with most of these folks; I'll take too clever over too dumb any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Maybe Shane didn't quite hit the nail on the head, but it's the man's first script in over a decade! Cut the guy some slack, tell him it's better than The Long Kiss Goodnight and to keep working, and Jeff... tell folks to see this because even you seem to agree that it's at least above average and exactly the kind of thing your readers will dig.

comment #11

nick says ...

Great question Colin...have been wondering when The Monster Squad would get the DVD treatment but I have read for the past few years that there is a rights issue tangling up the dvd release date.

comment #12

ryanagainstthemachine says ...

If I recall correctly, kiss kiss bang bang sucked balls. I remember thinking, boy this isn't as cool as Shane used to be. Val and Rob didn't have the chemistry that the preview suggested. How can you all think that movie was good at all.. I would say it was okay... but i would have been happier renting it. Shane was at the top of his game with The Long kiss Good night. I know he didnt direct it but damn that was a fuckin fun movie, mostly cuz the writing was so great! It was so over the top and the performances were awesome. Gena the assassin! Hahaha Fucking great!
He should just stick with writing and let his potential directing career go. Let the directors direct and the writers write... and the writer directors that established themselves as such in the beginning do their thing too! God Damnit!
To expand on my point, while refrencing Jeff's original thought...
Kiss kiss bang bang is no Long Goodbye.
To further expand i will demonstrate: the title
KISS KISS BANG BANG compared to the title
THE LONG GOODBYE.... No where near the same!
While,
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT and
THE LONG GOODBYE
are more similar in title...
and were the better 2 of the three
coincidence... I think not!
Then again i dont think ive seen the LONG GOODBYE
But Robbie Altman rocks, usually.
thank you.

Jeff you rock too!
PS. Why dont you make write and direct a movie? I'd go to see that!

comment #13

Shell says ...

You can get yourself an "illegal" copy of The Monster Squad on eBay anytime; I got a copy of Night of the Creeps via eBay, and it looks great.

comment #14

judy says ...

I agree with Pete. I hope Black is back for good too. I loved Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and everyone I talk movies too loved it too. It sure was alot more fun that a ton of movies out last year.

comment #15

BenDavid says ...

KKBB is the best movie of the last seven years (or at least tied with Shaun of the Dead).

comment #16

Dixon Steele says ...

Oh No!

From the tone of some of these comments, methinks this fine website has been discovered by the fratboys!

comment #17

Bob says ...

KKBB was and remains my hands-down favorite movie from last year. The balancing-act is nearly flawless: sharply satirizing pulp detective books and Black's signature buddy-movies while at the same time actually WORKING as both on it's own terms.

comment #18

Doug says ...

I love KKBB, too. Just watched it again last night. Great fun with great roles for Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, and a star-making one for Michelle Monaghan. Black is most definitely back.

comment #19

Mike Gebert says ...

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was cute, too slick, and spends way too much time explaining its convoluted plot rather than dramatizing it.

As movies go today, it was enjoyable enough, but it had about as much weight as a Naked Gun sequel.

"Then again i dont think ive seen the LONG GOODBYE"

That. coming after a long line of comments on the two films, is funnier than anything in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

comment #20

DowdyandthemachineagainstRyan says ...

LOL! Kiss Kiss is a great movie, not quite as good as "Donnie Darko" (what is???) but still better than the last two Matrix movies. The plotting was not contrived at all (he got the same finger chopped off twice, then a dog ate it!!! LOL!), Downey's character was consistent all the way through and Kilmer was gay without being gay! kinda asexual. Michelle Monaghan is a screen dream crowned queen in this break-out star turn and Black is back on track after his last panic attack! Smart people everywhere need to support Kiss-squared Bang-squared!

And hells yeah! Monster Squad on DVD! I know what I'm talking about because I have been watching movies since the early '90s and I know what I am talking about!!!

comment #21

Sean Richardson says ...

> Um, this movie needs smart movie folks like yourselves to recommend it, not step on its throat.

I find the very idea that you have an idea of what critics should do to be absurd; if Wells doesn't like a movie, should he say "hey, this little movie that has a small but strong cult following ... I don't like it, but I should still support wonderful independent artists like the guy who wrote 'Lethal Weapon', or Batman, trying to put out real art amid a Hollywood rebounding from the post-Tarantino ironic crime funk of the late '90's."

Shouldn't Jeff (or any critic) just say what they think about the movie?

> Kiss Kiss is a great movie, not quite as good as "Donnie Darko" (what is???) but still better than the last two Matrix movies.

So it's somewhere between "shit" and "crap"?

> As movies go today, it was enjoyable enough, but it had about as much weight as a Naked Gun sequel.

This is the best review of the movie I've ever heard, even though I think I liked it a little more than Mike. Serious kudos for that.

comment #22

Sean Richardson says ...

> You can get yourself an "illegal" copy of The Monster Squad on eBay anytime; I got a copy of Night of the Creeps via eBay, and it looks great.

Putting illegal in quotes the way you did falsely implies that the bootlegs offered on eBay are not actually illegal. They are illegal by all applicable copyright laws. Not to discourage anybody from buying them if they so choose, but understand what you're buying: A DVD-R (or +R) of a movie copied, at best, from a laserdisc.

There is scuttlebutt that the film will be released by 2007. I guarantee that when the film is released, it will be cheaper than the bootlegs.

comment #23

Pete Zha says ...

"Shouldn't Jeff (or any critic) just say what they think about the movie?"

Sure. But he's wrong on this one, so I thought I'd point it out. With "Kiss Kiss", a lot of folks still haven't seen it, so if they are going to be discouraged from doing so, why not respond? Anyway, the real mystery to me - why did you put the words shit and crap in quotes. To punch up your sad reply or something?

comment #24

moises says ...

I love that the argument on KKBB has devolved into "it hasn't been done before" to "trust me, it's been done, and better". I enjoyed it, but I think the above comment re: "too clever by half" is pretty dead-on.

Being clever is one thing, but too much sauce means there ain't enough flavor in the first place.

comment #25

Mike Gebert says ...

"Kiss Kiss is a great movie, not quite as good as "Donnie Darko" (what is???) but still better than the last two Matrix movies."

Hey, Leprechaun 5 and Leprechaun 6 are better than the last two Matrix movies. And what the hell do they, or Donnie Darko, have to do with a crime thriller?

As far as being convoluted goes, some of its twists and turns were deliberate and fun (like the finger thing), but others were inept storytelling-- what I mean by things being explained rather than dramatized is, the plot turns on various acts of imposture or mistaken identity, but since we never know what the person being imitated looked like in the first place, the narration has to do all the work of explaining it to us and the result feels like the wrap-up on Murder, She Wrote rather than something that's been visually conceived for the screen.

I liked the comic bits about life in shallow Hollywood, and Kilmer and Downey's fuck-you-too version of Hope and Crosby was amusing, but as somebody else sort of said above, in the end it's just another buddy movie trying to pretend it's a meta-buddy movie. Where The Long Goodbye-- which is my favorite Altman movie of the 70s-- is a masterpiece about moral rot in the bright sun of "if it feels good, do it" 70s California. If you haven't seen it, you need to!

comment #26

Michael Lear says ...

KKBB is a hell of a lot of fun. I disagree about the "totally stoned on how wise ass clever it is".It's self-consciously clever - you can't really compare it to Altman. The box-office failure of this was really disappointing. This was a movie I want a sequal to, not Da Vinci. Hope it is a hit of dvd.

comment #27

oddDuck says ...

I agree with just about every negative thing said about KKBB, but in the end still enjoyed the flick and want more of this kind of film in my local theater. Yeah, a sequel to this would be great, but you know it would never happen.

comment #28

Michael Lear says ...

Forgot to mention a theory about this movie's box office failure - the title is awful. How many people would pick up the Kael reference? Answer: hardly anyone. Try telling a spouse or significant other that you want to go see "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang". The response I got was priceless. Great movie, horrible title.