Disjointed, uneven, sporadically funny

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2016)

Throughout this film I couldn't shake the feeling that I had missed something. Watching it is like watching a long, long trailer with all the highlights, but with the explanatory scenes cut out. Shane Black, the director, seems to want to put on the screen his whole "bag of tricks" without making the effort to connect them in logical or emotional order. Watching the film becomes like thumbing through a catalog of Hollywood tropes. Black throws one thing after another on to the wall to see what sticks. (Catalog or spaghetti on the wall, which is it? That will give you an idea of how disjointed and jarring the narrative is.)
The film presents some genuinely funny moments. The problem is that they are not prepared for or followed up. In one scene (in the trailer) the two dump a body over a fence. Big laugh! But so what? We have almost no idea about the people on whose table the body is dumped. Where do they fit into Black's word? Having a body land on your patio table is a very effective metaphor of the corrupt nature of L.A., but it's immediately abandoned. I felt left in the lurch.
The director has declared that he wanted to convey, underneath the comedy, a more serious message about a corrupt world in which two knights in tarnished armor must make their way. So far, so good. The problem, again, is that he hasn't paid enough attention to establishing their backgrounds or to the development of their relationship. I felt constantly off balance and blind- sided.
Which relationship is primary: the one between the two detectives, or the one between Gosling's character and his daughter? The film can't seem to make up its mind and doesn't define either very satisfactorily. I kept comparing this film to "Paper Moon," and the latter won every time.
The director also declared that the moral objective of these knights is to protect little girls (among whom, besides Gosling's daughter, are adult female characters like Misty Mountains and Amelia). This is sentimental and patronizing. If we have learned anything since the seventies, it is that (1) women demand the right to make on their own decisions, and (2 ) that little boys and men deserve protection, too.