Travis’s Review of Knives Out

This wasn’t quite the comedy I thought it was going to be, but it was still super good.

I’m actually kind of a big fan of the, like, ‘someone rich dies in a big fancy house with all his family there and you gotta figure out who did it’ genre, and the trailer made it seem like this was pretty much a parody of that genre, but like, a black comedy parody, I guess? But it pretty much wasn’t, it was just the genre played pretty straight with some jokes and Daniel Craig doing a weird accent, but it was still really good.

I’m actually going to be careful not to have any spoilers for Knives Out in this review, so you don’t have to worry.

So basically the premise is that Christopher Plummer is a zillionaire writer man who dies on the night of his 85^th birthday, and it’s ruled a suicide, but Daniel Craig is a detective who suspects foul play was involved. And then his whole family is kind of shitty and they all hate each other, so there’s drama and junk. The main character is actually Christopher Plummer’s nurse Marta, who is helping Daniel Craig investigate the murder cause she’s the only one with a legit alibi and also because she weirdly can’t lie.

So I’m just going to open with this. I like this genre a lot, but I’m not the smartest guy in the world and I don’t usually figure it out, which is why I like to make bets on the outcome. I saw this with a bunch of guys from the baseball team, so you know. We all picked someone and one who got it right got to fuck the one who got it the most wrong in the bathroom after the movie. Usual bet rules, or whatever. I’m usually middle of the pack on this stuff. This time I won the bet, so in your face, Caleb. Or up your ass, I guess.

It’s okay, Joey works in the movie theatre so we’re not going to get in trouble.

Anyway, I thought the movie was going to be a big parody of the genre, or at least a comedy. And it’s definitely funny, but it’s definitely not as much a comedy as I thought it was going to be? Which is too bad, but it was still really good. There’s a super good twist like, a third of the way in that totally changes what you expect from a movie like this and almost makes it into a different genre, which I really liked.

And then there’s the big dramatic reveal that’s played super well, and at that point I guess the actors start to realize how hammy the movie is. I would have liked a bit more of that—like everyone in the movie is a super talented actor, and a lot of them don’t get the chance to really ham up the roles as these weird archetype characters who always appear in these movies. Which is too bad, cause you kind of get the cop guy lampshading it now and then, but those jokes might have landed better if there’d been more of it.

Other than that, though, this movie was honestly great. I want to visit or live in that huge hilarious house, it was so overdone and amazing, which is exactly what it should be. And it wasn’t just décor—the silliness of the house was part of the plot, which was really cool.

I can’t really say a lot more about the movie without spoiling it, which I really don’t want to do since part of the fun is finding out who did it. I really recommend going to see it, with a group of friends if you can. It’s a lot of fun!