As can be gathered from the title of this review, I found this enormous fun. The characters were not quite one-dimensional cartoons – but they were certainly brightly candy-coloured and entertaining use was made of many mystery tropes. There was the strange suicide (?) of a very wealthy family patriarch, his assorted venal and self-centred children and relatives, all hoping and expecting profit from his death, the ‘gathering of the clan’ at the family mansion and the reading of the will. And there was the ‘super detective’, in this case Daniel Craig with the weirdest, most unconvincing Southern American accent I have ever heard that seemed to bear no relationship or importance at all to the sort of character portrayed.
When he was first introduced as a silent listener to the police questioning of the family on the night of the patriarch’s death, I seemed as if he was going to take the role of the expert/odd/mysterious super-detective who helps the police. Think Poirot/Miss Marple/Holmes et al) solve the mystery when they cannot (or do not) recognize a mystery when it stares them in the face. However, he did not really become this sort of character and his actual role and reason for being there was not fully or significantly explored. He did not have any special or unique characteristics that made him stand out (either as an individual or as a detective) and as a result, it was rather tricky to see his actual dramatic role – although he did rapidly take pole position and solve the mystery.
The revelation of the plot was quite effective, if perhaps a little too rapidly done in the concluding part of the film when a steady pace was effective in building up tension and allowing us to get to know the characters. It certainly twisted back, upon and inside itself as we approached the ending with a remarkable number of rapid false flags.
An enjoyable view, though; it will be interesting to see what the second one is like and whether it does anything radically different in terms of style and elaborate plotting. And will Daniel Craig’s detective, Benoit, be revealed as being somewhat more interesting and intriguing as he was in this first outing of his? But sadly I suppose Jamie Lee Curtis will not be in it. She was the true star of this film and it is both absurd and astonishing that she honestly seems to get sexier with every passing year!