Netflix Original #3 - Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie

Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie

Director - Jeff Garlin

Writers - Jeff Garlin and Andrea Seigel

Starring - Jeff Garlin, Natasha Lyonne, Christine Woods, Timm Sharp, Steven Weber

"You see this guy here, sure but is that the whole story, I mean how do we know this guy doesn't work at a rental car place near the airport, alright, and it's his boss's last day, maybe that guy's name is Roger, Roger loves to golf so he and all his coworkers dress up like Roger, golfers, and you know what Roger always wanted to do, skydivings, so they all get in a car, go over to the airstrip and they get in a skydivings place, they get up to 20000 feet and they get into an argument, maybe it's about a girl, maybe it's about who had the right recipe for a veggie chili, we don't know the answer to that yet, but then an argument breaks out, this guy gets strangled, he gets thrown out of the skydivings place, guess where he lands, of all places, golf course, case closed."

Jeff Garlin considers himself so ugly that the only way he can get people to call him handsome is to write, direct and star in a movie in which his character is literally named "Handsome." You'd think a guy who hangs out with Larry David would have a better self-image. In Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie Garlin plays a homicide detective investigating the murder of his new neighbor's babysitter with the help his partner Det. Scozzari (Lyonne). Ostensibly this is a comedic detective story but the humour is so bland and predictable and the direction so inert and lifeless that it comes across as the longest, most boring pilot for next fall's new hour long detective show on CBS that nobody you know watches.

Actually that statement is a lie, the humour is far too risque and there are far too many instances of foul language for this to run on CBS, maybe FOX, but not CBS. It isn't even good use of the risque humour of cursing. Many of the movie's more sexual gags revolve around the fact that women have sex. That's it. Bitches Be Fucking. Scozzari is a moving vagina constantly propelling herself at random dicks, especially those attached to persons of interest (Sharp) in the case. The victim has a "pussy waxer" and shops at Victoria's Secret. The neighbor (Woods) mumbled an inquiry to Handsome polling his preference on female pubic hair. Handsome's superior officer (Amy Sedaris) blatantly hits on Handsome in the office. You may think I am merely describing situations used for comic effect in the film but no, those are the actual jokes (except Bitches Be Fucking, that is mine)

When the film is not seemingly equally befuddled and shocked by the female sex drive it's sense of humour largely revolved around hacky sitcom gags. The kind of "jokes" where a character says they won't ever do something and then a lazy cut to them doing that are par the course here. Occasionally Garlin crafts some solid absurdist humour such as the above quote or the drive-in but those instances are so far and few between they feel like oases in a desert.

"I want to quit the force forever"

With the comedic element being a miss the only possible saving grace becomes the actual mystery. This is not good. Despite a fourth wall breaking cold open where the actor playing the killer (Weber) tells us who he is the rest of the film ignores that and plays out as a standard homicide procedural wherein our intrepid detectives go around talking to witnesses, persons-of-interest, coroners and others in a series of scenes that consist of characters just standing around talking, or if we're getting really adventurous, sitting around talking. It's essentially directed as a radio play or amateur theatrical production.

There is a sub-plot involving a potential romantic pairing between Handsome and his neighbor wherein they bond over their shared love of dogs but it is completely inconsequential as is the set up of Handsome leading a class of rookie detectives who all disappear after the first 15 minutes leaving us with just Handsome, Scozzari, our unnecessarily distracting red herring ex-husband of the neighbor and the Hollywood actor who kills the girl playing their parts in this inert, unfunny sitcom pilot of a film.

Schurmann Score - 1/10