Poolman Is Chaotic, Confusing & Borderline Annoying

It’s difficult to point out exactly what about <em>Poolman</em> is enraging. Is it the lack of narrative structure? Is it the non-sequitur dialogues? Is it the haphazard “parody” of the crime-noir genre?

Swetha+Ramakrishnan

Oct 18, 2024

Promo poster for Poolman.

THERE'S A SCENE early on in Poolman, the recent Chris Pine film that released on Lionsgate Play this weekend, which is quite a mirror to how the film pans out over its 96-minute runtime.

In the scene, Darren Barrenman (Pine), a long-time California resident and pool cleaner, is at a council meeting at the LA City Court, which is being hosted by councillor Stephen Torenkowski (Stephen Tobolowski, who has perhaps the most effortless character arc in the film; sadly he’s the only one). He’s pitching for a slow tram service in the city, but his impassioned speech is so much more about protesting against everything that LA authorities stand for. He has a documentary crew with him (the director played by Danny Devito — who is charming and engaging as always) and he thinks he’s giving the speech of a lifetime, with a zealous audience who is lapping up his every word. In reality, his audience is dead, the authorities want to kick him out, and his documentary crew is perhaps even more delusional than he is.

Poolman is similarly chaotic, confusing and borderline annoying. It’s trying to be artistically whimsical (think The Big Lebowski) and wants to make a statement on the existential nature of living in a city like LA. But the film ends up amounting to a whole lot of nothing. I can’t tell if pissing off the audience was part of the film's intent (wouldn’t put it past Chris Pine), but it’s difficult to point out exactly what about the film is enraging. Is it the lack of narrative structure? Is it the non-sequitur dialogues? Is it the haphazard “parody” of the crime-noir genre? You’ll never know — and perhaps that’s the most annoying part of watching the film.

As a viewer, you have to pick up the narrative’s breadcrumbs to make cohesive sense of the story; an effort I did not sign up for on a Friday night — so, be warned.

Let me see if I got the story right. Darren is a depressed manchild who lives in a dilapidated LA apartment complex with a pool in the centre. He maintains the pool, just the one, but calls himself a poolman. He has two best friends, Jack and Diane (DeVito and Annette Bening respectively) who serve as parental figures to him, and a girlfriend, Susan, who — *spoiler alert* — leaves him for an FBI officer who’s way more interested in her than Darren ever could be. When he’s not protesting against the several injustices of the city or shooting a documentary about his “earnest” efforts as a citizen, he spends his time writing letters, on a typewriter, to Erin Brockovich (not Julia Roberts, please note) because he’s just so inspired by her activism.

The plot shoots off (if at all you could ever say that) when a femme fatale June Del Ray (DeWanda Wise) asks him for his help in a Chinatown-esque conspiracy. Darren gets sucked into a political subterfuge and spends the rest of the movie pretending to be a detective from a 1950s noir murder mystery (top hat and all).

It’s very clear Poolman wants to be an intelligent satire that is also funny. However, the film ends up being neither intelligent nor funny or satirical. It baffles me that Chris Pine would choose a film like this to be his directorial debut. Each scene is written with the intention of being idiosyncratic vignettes but they end up being disconnected scenes that champion absurd gibberish. Any attempts at being artistic (there are a few), are washed away by the infuriating pace of the dialogues and the film.

At several points, you will be left wondering why you chose to watch it, and I promise you if I didn’t have to review it, I would have abandoned it halfway (with no guilt). Apparently there were several walkouts at the Toronto Film Festival last year when the film had its official world premiere. Can’t say I’m surprised.

Poolman is currently streaming on Lionsgate Play.