So I did this one to myself… I knew the reputation of Poolman as an ego-driven stinker which actually made me curious. Could it, indeed, be as bad as they say? Yes. Yes it can.

Poolman stars Captain Kirk (I mean one of the Chrises) as a male Karen poolman who <waves hands wildly> and decided to become a detective <waves hands wildly> because of the movie Chinatown <waves hands wildly>. The end.

To say I lost the plot on this film would assume I ever had it in the first place. Whether it was me distracted by shiny objects or a very bad script, bad line readings, or incredible poor editing that never knew when to focus the audiences’ attention, I was lost almost immediately. It makes me feel like a total movie fan failure… so maybe if the flick makes sense to you, you can give it 5 stars. I won’t.

I think a major source of problems is Chris Pine and the character he created for himself. Look, it’s a shame to call any long-haired hippy who attempts to solve crime in Los Angeles a Lebowski wannabe since that assumes there can be only one Jeffry Lebowski (and we know that’s not true) so saying Pine is trying to emulate that classic would be unfair. Also, Poolman would rather compare itself (a little egoistically) to Chinatown… and you sir are no Chinatown.

As a Lebowski-like male Karen, Chris Pine is basically playing Captain Kirk with long hair. Whoever his character is supposed to be, he just comes across as a pretty boy blue-eyes Chris doing a Chris Pine impersonation. I can’t imagine that was the intended character for this lay-about poolman male Karen hippie.

Regardless of that, Pine called in a lot of favors for some pretty good acting support… people like Danny DeVito who probably had no idea what the plot was either. Annette Benning, Clancy Brown, Ray Wise, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and other showed up to support their favorite Chris. More power to them… maybe they knew what was going on.

I almost hate to give the movie such a low score just because I was a thundering dunderhead who couldn’t follow the plot. But I choose to blame the script and directing.

Score: 56