First of all, I never saw Cillian Murphy that way until this movie. I mention this in the podcast, but that couch scene at the end of the movie? Ok ok, not just that, but the way he, as Neil, looks at Violet (Lucy Liu) when they first meet? This is what romcoms are supposed to be… and that’s exactly it: I don’t often find edgy romcoms like this one. Romcoms in the age of Netflix have become so formulaic that I’m yawning just from looking at the poster, but this was a gem for reasons mentioned in the episode.
But it was also a gem because it spoke to me as someone who has been in and out of long term relationships since I was 15 (I have daddy issues, sue me if you want), I can confidently say that the story, however ridonkulous and rom-commy, tries to address two of the biggest fears we have as people when it comes to finding the right person: Are they a good person? Will they be boring or get bored of me? Though packaged as any old romcom, is actually a deeper introspection into our fears about love.
How do we know that we’ve fallen in love with someone patient, loyal, and creative? Or, how do we know our romantic interest is patient when inconvenienced, loyal when under threat or pressure, and creative when inevitably the humdrum nature of long-term relationship strikes and you find yourself bored of the person you were once crazy about? The film tries to answer these questions in a funny way, while paying homage to film noir and an Elvis Costello song.
▢ KINDNESS IN THE FORM OF PATIENCE
At the beginning of the film, we see Neil (Murphy) at a restaurant hiding and telling the waiter to spill some water on his about-to-be-ex-gf Denise (played Heather Burns, the sweet girl from Miss Congeniality) before he headed over to sit down with her. The waiter abides and spills some water on her lap and you see her get pissed about it. It didn’t make sense to me at the time but by the time that I finished the movie, I saw that this was Neil’s way of testing Denise. “Don’t you think you were a little harsh on the waiter?” he asks when he sits down.
Sure, anybody would have been I suppose, but we do tend to hold our beloveds to higher standards, don’t we? But I think that what this scene was getting at is how we so often put our dates through little tests to make sure they’re good people. Of course, being rude to the waiter is a classic turn-off though in this case it was provoked. Well, “testing” might be an ugly word when the pranks involved, but don’t we all at least observe them closely to see that they are kind?
—What character traits do/did you look for in your romantic interests?
▢ LOYALTY UNDER DURESS
In of Violet’s most traumatizing pranks, two suits come into Neil’s office to question harass him about the incident at Media Giant. It’s a tense scene and Neil is clearly shaking in his boots, but the detectives aren’t interested in him. They want Neil’s accomplice’s, Violet’s, contact information. Neil doesn’t budge. He says he doesn’t know anything even at the threat of a more serious punishment. At which point, Violet comes out of the proverbial bushes laughing hysterically at the prank.
It’s easy to dismiss this scene as a prank of bad taste, but I saw it differently. In a prior scene, Violet explicitly tells him not to give her phone number to anyone and this dumb prank was her way of knowing whether Neil would keep her confidence or not— even when faced with a horrible threat. The prank is extreme for comedic purposes, but I get it. There’s no worse betrayal than your partner giving you up to make themselves look better or, worse, to save their own ass.
▢ CREATIVE WHEN BORED
At some point in the movie, Violet tells Neil that she never wants to be looked at like an old comfortable shoe, especially when there’s a whole world out there to explore beyond the TV screen. All of her antics, though bizarre and worrisome, seem to have been an expression of her fear of being bored (or bore-ophobia as she calls it) but also the fear of boring someone. When I eventually put these pieces together to come up with this interpretation, the film became endearing. We have all felt these things.
Crazy antics aside, I think that Violet was also seeing how willing Neil would be to do something new and out-of-the-box everyday. Relationships take work. When the honeymoon era fades after three years and your significant other starts to feel more like a sibling than a lover, or worse, more like a roommate, you have to get creative. Are you going to vandalize something? Experiment with role play? What new adventures will you, willingly and enthusiastically, embark on together?
—How do you/would you like to keep things exciting in your relationship?
▲ A Word on Therapy Speak
As a side note, the movie also gives us a peek at the level therapy speak and self-diagnosis culture that existed at the time prior to Instagram and its pop psychologists. Jason Sudeikis’s character (yes, he’s in the movie too!) sports this tee while he and Neil are shooting the hoops, exchanging theories about what could be wrong with Violet. And it made me wonder: when did we start with the therapy speak as we see it today in 2024?
It seems that we started to see therapy speak in the mid20th century, which is coincidentally when color televisions became more popular and affordable. Could there be a correlation between our media technology and the spread of the kind of information that makes us want to understand our behavior (or that of others)? It would totally make sense if there was, because it would explain why therapy speak absolutely blew up with the advent of Instagram in the 2010s until today.
All in all, I think “Watching the Detectives” (2007) was deeper than first meets the eye. It currently has a 6.2 rating on IMDB but I would give it a solid 7/10. I just don’t think fashioning what was at its heart a funny light hearted rom-com into a genre notorious for “crime, sex, psychological trauma and anxiety” really worked even if film noir was alluded to through its cinematography and references to film noir titles. However, we see two actors do roles they don’t normally do to a 2000s soundtrack featuring non-mainstream rock bands from NZ, Canada, and the US and I thought that was cool shit.
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