Audience Rated by buyers R (Restricted)
Type of bind: Video Download
Release Date: May 30, 2008
Running Time: 110 minutes
Sale Popularity Level: 7289
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: February 15, 2003
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Rated by buyers 
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What can I say? I was a Singing Detective virgin, being ignorant of the British TV show or the story line. I bought it for Robert Downey, Jr. It is weird, disturbing and pulls you in like a moth to a flame. I have watched it several times now, getting a little more understanding every time I do. My favorite scene is the Mr. Sandman number. How funny!
The acting is supurb; why this didn't get any critical acclaim is beyond me. Robert Downey Jr proves, yet again, that professionally no one can touch him. He is a rare class of actor that can deliver any range be it humour or tragedy. This role had to be a challenge though with the total body make up needed for Dan Dark's horrible skin condition; not to mention the emotional roller coaster the character is on. The man appears to cry real tears at one point! Kudos RDJ!! I wish The People could vote for Oscar winners and not "The Academy". There would be a lot of different winners. RDJ would have several of the gold guys on his mantelpiece if I had anything to do with it.
I don't care for the ending at all; I probably don't totally understand it yet. For a SD newbie, trying to figure out which scene is in Dan Dark's tortured mind or is for real is part of the fun of this film. I intend to see the British series as soon as I can. Maybe I can understand the ending better. Hummm......
It's not for everyone but for those willing to take a risk and actually have to think about a story rather than just watch it, oh, do try this film.
Rated by buyers 
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it was all scrated and will never by from them again.
Rated by buyers 
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I'm a huge Robert Downey, Jr. fan, but this movie did not live up to my expectations. I found it tedious and boring for the most part. I guess every great actor has an occasional bad movie.
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The film is a strange animal, all right, a work sans genre, and at times Gordon seems to have overreached himself, grasping for effects he isn't quite able to achieve. The various styles, moods, and genres give the film a slightly garish, amateurish feel, yet in the end (perhaps consciously on Gordon's part) this very awkwardness works in the film's favor. The Singing Detective is a remarkably ingenuous work, fresh and daring, almost childlike in its lack of pretension, and easily one of the most original American movies of the last twenty years. Above all, it showcases Robert Downey Jr.'s raging, embittered psoriasis-afflicted pulp writer, inside whose head the whole movie (more or less) takes place, and Downey gives an inventive, powerful performance, what may be the apotheosis of his enormous talent. Praise for Downey notwithstanding, on its release Gordon's film met with a wall of critical resistance, a veritable consensus of contempt. This may have been due in part (in the UK at least) to a fondness for Potter's original TV series; but it was perhaps due even more to the basic incompatibility of Potter's idiosyncratic, scathing vision with mainstream (critical) tastes. Whatever the case, the movie once again tragically failed to find its audience.
As with his previous adaptations, Gordon respected the source material without revering it, and as a director, he has a rare gift: the ability to fuse his own sensibility and talents with his subject at a fundamental level. In the case of The Singing Detective, it was a somewhat less seamless fusion; Potter's vision (his bizarre blend of musical fantasy with bleak psychological realism) was so startlingly original it required another sensibility at least as strong and eccentric to fuse with. Gordon doesn't quite possess (yet) the surrealist gifts to make Potter's vision his own, or to take it to the subsequent level (David Lynch might be the only director capable of that). He's a proficient director in every way, and seems to be blessed with a natural rapport with actors (perhaps why so many good ones want to work with him). Yet Gordon isn't a visionary director, and this was a visionary script. Fortunately, he had a visionary actor at a career peak to take up the slack, and Downey carries the day.
The Singing Detective isn't a masterpiece; it's flawed and fractured and at times thin, even facile and occasionally redundant (most especially in the pseudo-noir sequences). But it's an imaginative and fearless piece of cinema, an admirably eccentric work that manages to do something like justice to a brilliant piece of writing. Full of inventive delights and heartfelt touches, it leaves most other recent American films in the dust. Yet it flopped badly, both in the UK and the US, being so poorly reviewed that many people (myself included) gave it a miss, wary of the stench of failure. As it happened, the bad smells came not from the film but from critics too corrupt and jaded to recognize a work of art when they saw it.
(Excerpt from "True to the Muse: Keith Gordon's Life on the Fringe," from DOGVILLE VS. HOLLYWOOD, by Jake Horsley)
Rated by buyers -
Few if any reviewers here indicate having watched Keith Gordon's director's commentary on this DVD. I think it would alter some of their judgements. As Gordon explains, the film script was in fact written by Dennis Potter, whose original "Singing Detective" ran as a much longer miniseries on British TV 20 years ago, and the changes to an American setting with 1950s American pop music were really Potter's own ideas. If the transition to feature film format loses something in the translation, it is in part due to his reconceptualization of his original creation.
As the commentary reveals, much of the inventiveness in this new version is not apparent in a single viewing. While it may seem to truncate and over-simplify the lengthier TV version, there is still complexity and ambiguity enough to entertain and engage a thoughtful viewer appreciative of good screenwriting and wonderful performances. Robert Downey's dual role as the embittered writer and the Bogart-style detective of the title reveal the mercurial range of this amazing actor, and his scenes with Robin Wright Penn, who plays his wife, are a brilliant portrayal of two people equally matched in their struggle to preserve a relationship and, at the same time, the integrity of themselves as individuals.
Strong cast. Interesting contrast of visual styles. Rated R for a wide range of disturbingly graphic and lurid visual imagery, including the main character's horrific skin condition. Granted, this "Singing Detective" is no substitute for the original, but seen on its own merits, it still stands up well on its own.
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