A little too silly and "take that, haters" for me, but not without its highs

Rating: 5/10 (16 December 2019)

Unless I'm missing something extremely crucial, Rian Johnson is a director who seems to single-handedly confirm that modern critics like to play favorites. The same people who dismiss criticisms of The Last Jedi - at least ones that concern inconsistent rules, inconsistent tone, and inconsistent/unconvincing/lacking characterization - as superficial nitpicks that scoff at underlying themes and risk-taking, will gladly (and correctly) make those complaints about the final season of Game of Thrones. When Disney and Johnson mess up, it's fine.
I'm not making any allegations against mainstream critics beyond that, nor shall I read their minds; people often accuse them of (1) being bought and paid for by certain studios, (2) licking the feet of "Hollywood liberals" until that does happen, or (3) having a political slant that favors certain filmmakers and messages. That last one may seem similar to the second one, but we forget "bias" refers to genuine opinion; not ass-kissery.
As I said in "The NPC Meme and the Irony of Who's Using It", people like to make it easy for themselves by assuming no dissenting political opinions are genuine, but rather the result of Orwellian indoctrination and/or a desire to gain something from a left-wing establishment. Point is, it could very well be that critics sincerely adore Rian Johnson to a point of going unfairly easy on him.
In the murder mystery Knives Out, he cartoonishly inserts his detractors (without even doing them the justice Lady in the Water did those of Shyamalan) and political enemies in a way that this year's Joker is often derided for doing, usually by critics I have observed loving this film (despite Todd Phillips not being this in-your-face and never asserting that evil is, say, a uniquely leftist thing). Again, the selectivity with which modern critics apply their lens really fascinates me, especially when they do it in a way where a movie that's "more guilty" of what they're decrying gets away. I'm not telling you which lens to use, mind you, or which standards you personally should want a good product to meet. I just hope all films are truly equal before your judgment.
As I see it, Knives Out isn't horrible. Much of it, in fact, is quite good, particularly in the areas of cinematography and art direction. But praising stuff like this and concluding it's an over-all good movie is even more surface-level than that which Johnson's haters are accused of being shallow for doing, namely assessing the writing. To Rian's credit, my main gripes are with the ham-handed references, the occasional goofy-yet-self-serious line, and such subtle character names as Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans). For what it's worth, I nearly saw Black Christmas instead of Knives Out and this is Tarkovskian by comparison.
Daniel Craig plays Detective Benoite Blanc, whose hilariously French name evokes Hercule Poirot, more so than his unconvincing Southern drawl. The rest of the cast, many of them prime suspects, consists of Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas (who, get this, vomits when she tells lies), Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, Christopher Plummer, Lakeith Stanfield, and Katherine Langford of 13 Reasons Why.
These actors, many of them legends, do well enough and work off of each other in entertaining ways (even when they aren't given the most dignified sentences to enunciate). As with the script, the characters show potential. It's a shame all the Star Wars drama compelled dear Rian to damage it by pretentiously owning his haters through the "alt-right troll kid" and whatnot.
I guess this became more of an article about Rian Johnson and Film Twitter than it was strictly about Knives Out, but although I didn't really like it, both this film and The Last Jedi show that he can create a gorgeous movie that, at least in the case of the latter movie, has interesting themes to communicate. We're not doing him any favors by pretending this is the best he can ever do in terms of script effort.