‘Poolman’: London Review

Dir. Chris Pine. US. 2023. 100 mins

When the credits of actor-writer-director-producer collide in one person, viewers are well-advised to proceed with caution. That’s certainly the case in Poolman, Chris Pine’s directorial debut which he also wrote, co-produced, and stars in. (Another credited producer, Ian Gotler, shares writing duties.) As his titular character emerges from a trailer in the film’s first moments to tend to a tiny pool in a rundown Los Angeles apartment block, everything from Pine’s bare chest to long shaggy Bon Jovi locks to salmon-coloured shorts promises ‘hot mess’. Perhaps in a good way? The Big Lebowski? Perhaps not.

Confuses reams of dialogue with a screenplay

If it ever gets beyond the bad reviews which have dogged it from a Toronto premiere to London, Poolman will mostly baffle viewers with a shallow plot that wants to salute Chinatown and the LA noir but ultimately confuses reams of dialogue with a screenplay. A series of sketches linked by Pine’s character Darren Bannenman, it’s a witless illustration of why film-making checks and controls exist. It’s also a good example of why festivals shouldn’t compromise their integrity. Further indulging Star Trek’s Pine comes at the cost of someone else’s low-budget dreams and aspirations. Appearances from the too-rarely-seen trio of Annette Bening, Danny De Vito and Jennifer Jason Leigh may give Poolman some cachet, although it seems unlikely to jump to the top of any of their resumes.

Calling himself DB, Bannerman seems to eke out a living in a tiki-hut by tending to to the apartment complex’s one small pool. He’s the only one who ever seems to swim there. He’s a simple oddball, perhaps a stoner, perhaps intellectually challenged - it’s hard to tell with Pine’s manic performance. He bangs out cheery letters to Erin Brokovich on a manual typewriter, for example, makes origami creatures, and plays The Flower Duet from Lakme (aka the British Airways theme tune) on a Discman as he measures chlorine levels in slow-motion. Leigh plays DB’s girlfriend Susan, and an extended scene in which they have sex and talk in non-sequiturs seems to indicate that things aren’t going well between this mis-matched couple, although he’s too clueless to notice.

Other neighbours at the complex include Bening as DB’s ‘Jungian shrink’; and De Vito as her partner - the director of a preposterous documentary they’re putting together about developers in LA, corruption in City Hall, and trolley cars. Showing a scene from Chinatown doesn’t elevate these half-baked proceedings and a side-plot involving a corrupt councillor/Rabbi played by Stephen Tobolowsky is particularly difficult to digest.

Pine’s characters talk incessantly:  even a random femme fatale played by DeWanda Wise has too many lines and the rest appear to have caught a virulent strain of verbal diarrhoea. Yet it doesn’t seem right to politely enquire about technical credits  - editing, for example, given the multiple hats the editor’s boss is wearing. Questions could be asked of Stacey Sher and Patty Jenkins as lead producers, along with Pine and Gotler. Chris Pine, though, is Poolman: his name is stamped all over it as the title comes up, and it’s there as the film slowly sinks. That’s the problem with taking so many credits: there’s no other name to own it.