KILLING ME SOFTLY // A FILM REVIEW OF "BAD DETECTIVES"
Ping Liu (Dralla Aierken) and Nic O' Connell (Freya Tingley) are two ex-friends who have been brought back together after the passing of each of their grandfathers, who ran a detective agency together. From jump, they can't stand each other and can hardly be in the same room. So it's quite a shock when they find out that their grandfathers have bequeathed the detective agency to the two of them. Soon they discover that their grandfathers may not have died of natural causes and are drawn into a conspiracy of sorts. Not knowing who they can turn to, they have to turn to each other to solve the mystery of their grandparents possible murder and to save the detective agency. That, in an essence, is what's clear from BAD DETECTIVES (previously known as YEAR OF THE DETECTIVES). However, that's about all that's clear.
It's actually astonishing how much this film gets wrong, from the amateurish acting to the awful direction and "camerawork" that usually consists of setting the camera down and acting around it, without the camera atually following them. It's also rare that a film is consistently this bad and still gets released, yet here it is. In the very first few moments, the film has a "larger than life" kind of feel, which can work. I even started thinking, "Oh, this could be a kind of Big Trouble in Little China kind of feel. But alas, it's nowhere near that. There is absolutely no chemistry between the two leads of Dralla Aierken and Freya Tingley, the latter is directed to be constantly drunk but never even successfully plays off being buzzed. The entire supporting cast is even worse, save for Stephen A. Chang, who is trying his best to find something to work with here.
With a running time of 72 minutes, it barely even feels like a feature. But because there is so little plot to work with, they included some absolutely ridiculous scenes, like a kind of "makeover moment," a push up contest between the two leads, and several sequences that happen completely off camera, most likely due to the fact that they only had about five sets to choose from. There's even a phone call were the camera only cuts to the two detectives, sitting next to each other, and the iPhone, instead of ever showing the other side of the conversation. Somehow, the two girls solve the case, even though the audience will have very little idea of what happened. BAD DETECTIVES lives 100% up to its name and the only future it has seems to be an entry for a future episode of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000."
GRADE: F
WRITTEN BY Chris Johnson DIRECTED BY Presley Paras STARRING Dralla Aierken, Freya Tingley, Stephen A. Chang, Jim Meskimen,