For his directorial debut, Chris Pine has assembled a stellar cast who do the most they can with the material they are given. Poolman also has moments where it is beautifully shot, basked in the sunshine of its Los Angeles setting. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of what Poolman has going for it, as Pine, seemingly desperate to use noir tropes to create a crime farce like The Big Lebowski, packs the script he co-wrote alongside Ian Gotler with nonsensical plot, flat characters and verbose, perplexing dialogue. There’s not a laugh to be had amid all the stagnant, amateur-sleuthing tomfoolery, and it all moves a snail’s pace.
Pine stars as Darren Barrenman, a long-haired, salt-and-pepper-bearded pool cleaner who is also insufferably passionate about devising new ideas to improve the community for his fellow Angelenos. He’s a daily presence and barely tolerated annoyance at city council meetings, where he grandstands and concocts elaborate presentations he can never fully deliver during his allotted time to speak. When not causing a civic ruckus, he can usually be found hanging around his camper alongside the pool he tends at a tiki-themed apartment block, or in bed with his girlfriend Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who wants to talk about their relationship when they’re not knocking boots. He also spends ample time on the couch of his pal and quasi-therapist Diane (Annette Bening) or attempting to shoot a documentary with buddy Jack (Danny DeVito).
When he gets a little too riled up at a council meeting, Darren is mysteriously sprung from jail by femme fatale June (DeWanda Wise), secretary to powerful councilmember Stephen Toronkowski (Stephen Tobolowsky), and she seeks Darren’s aid in taking down her corrupt boss. A dreadfully dull and meandering neo-noir plot ‒ largely revolving around a conspiracy to control access to water amid a Los Angeles drought ‒ unfurls as Darren and his ragtag group of friends try to get to the bottom of things. Though meant as a farce, Poolman so overtly revels in its implausible noir trappings that Chinatown is directly referenced on numerous occasions. But the film most apes The Big Lebowski, though wildly unsuccessfully. We get the L.A. burnout traipsing around ornate mansions in the pre-digital era on an unlikely undercover mission, only to periodically return to a familiar recreation to find zen-like peace—in this case, a bowling alley replaced by a pool, to the point that Darren routinely plunges into the water in full lotus position. We even get a similar aesthetic applied to occasional hallucinatory sequences, sans the Busby Berkeley choreography.
Unfortunately, the inept script doesn’t belong in the same sentence as the Coen brothers’ classic. Committed performances by a game cast – which also includes Ray Wise and John Ortiz — can’t keep Poolman afloat when dragged down by such a ponderous script, which seems to confuse volume for depth. Angelenos may identify with the bevy of local references Pine and Gotler stuff into the script, but these inside jokes will further alienate general audiences from a story and characters who are neither relatable nor compellingly quirky enough to warrant interest. Confounding at best and infuriatingly aimless at worst, Poolman never manages to keep its head above water.
Photo courtesy of Vertical
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