Directed by Chris Pine, Poolman tells the story of Darren Barrenman (Chris Pine), a native Angeleno who spends his days looking after the pool of the Tahitian Tiki apartment block and fighting to make his hometown a better place to live. When he is tasked by a femme fatale to uncover the truth behind a shady business deal, Darren enlists the help of his friends to take on a corrupt politician and a greedy land developer. His investigation reveals a hidden truth about his beloved city and himself.
We currently live in a time where many actors and actresses have been trying out directing, both in film and television, with a number of them proving themselves to have a surprising amount of talent behind the camera. Chris Pine is the newest actor to take a shot at directing with this debut film that was first shown at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), though it received a very negative reception. Despite this, I still decided to give it a watch, mostly because I do love Chris Pine as an actor, and I was interested to see what this film was going to be like given the premise.
After watching it I have to honestly say that I consider Poolman to be one of the most bizarre films I’ve seen this year, and not in a good way. It’s unfortunately a messy directorial debut for Chris Pine despite some of the potential it had, and I can understand why this film ended up being so despised by critics at TIFF. It comes off as a very weird film that can be somewhat entertaining in some ways but also tonally and narratively confusing to the point where I wasn’t sure if it was trying to take itself seriously or not. It could have been a hilarious comedy mystery film that could have delivered great laughs and an abundance of entertainment with its quirky characters and humorous premise but none of it came out that well as a result of messy writing and poor execution.
We have an immensely talented cast recruited for this film and while I do think they all do well performance-wise, most of the characters they played felt very shallow, one-dimensional, and not as entertaining throughout the entire film, with the only exception being Chris Pine as the titular lead. He fully commits to this over the top character he has created, making him in my view a fairly lovable goofball that gave me the most entertainment in the film as a whole. Even when the character bounces in all sorts of narrative directions Chris Pine was able to get a certain amount of laughs out of me through his performance, and I did find myself actually caring for what his character was going through, mainly because of his performance.
He’s the only character that I felt had a sense of direction while the others felt like they were just put in this film to have random nonsensical conversations with him throughout the film. Danny DeVito in particular seemed to be given no real direction as I felt a majority of his character was just being the talkative best friend who goes off on random tangents and never stops. The same can also be said for a lot of the other characters, and again while the performances by the cast were fine I just felt there was no real development to make them stand out.
While this film fails from a character and story standpoint I do have to give some legitimate praise to the technical elements of this film because honestly, everything from the cinematography, sets, editing, and music was overall pretty solid. This film felt like a visual love letter to certain parts of Los Angeles and if that was the goal then I say it definitely succeeded and showcases that Chris Pine can be pretty good behind the camera as well as in front of it. It’s just a shame that the same amount of effort put into the technical elements of the film was not applied to the narrative elements.
The main issue of the film purely stems from inexperienced writing and a poorly put-together plot, resulting in a bizarre product that could have been better had it been better developed. This film in a way felt like what would happen if Tommy Wiseau directed The Big Lebowski and I don’t think that was at all what Chris Pine was trying to make. There were some interesting ideas that were obviously present but were just not executed as well as intended.
I do think Chris Pine is still excellent as an actor and I think he has potential talent behind the camera, as demonstrated with the technical elements of this film, but he clearly has a lot to improve upon in terms of writing. This film may have been a misfire but not every first attempt will be a success. I hope to see Chris Pine learn from this and maybe try again in the future. I’m going to give Poolman a D = 64.
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