Poolman Was a Bad Film, Or Was It?

Thoughts on why slacker noir is a slow burn

You probably didn’t see Poolman. Chris Pine’s slacker noir earned $159,596 at the box office—a flop at any budget. With a score of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not like Poolman is in danger of cracking the Netflix top ten, or breaking VOD records. Also, the critics hated it. Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Rechtshaffen called it a “shrill misfire.” In IndieWire, Siddhant Adlakha wrote, “[Poolman is] only 100 minutes long, but upward of 99 of those minutes are likely to be spent in silent boredom, if not irritated disbelief at being subjected to such guileless, artless nonsense.” Finally, there was this from Owen Gleiberman in Variety:

I’m a fan of Chris Pine: the early Shatner-smooth charisma, the powerful chops he’s displayed in movies like Hell or High Water, the authoritative snap of his performance as the cult-leader heavy in Don’t Worry Darling. So I take no vicious pleasure in saying that Poolman, a movie that Pine co-wrote, directed, and stars in, is not only the worst film I saw during the fall festival season but would likely be one of the worst films in any year it came out. Okay, maybe I’m taking a bit of vicious pleasure in saying that, since I had to sit through the goddamn thing. At the Toronto Film Festival showing I attended, there were a lot of walkouts.

I sort of agree with the critics, but I also liked Poolman, and for reasons I’ll get into, I think the film might age better than the critics think.

When I saw the trailer for Poolman, I knew it was my kind of film. Slacker noir—a genre that blends the dark cynicism of noir with the absurdity of slacker / stoner comedy—isn’t just my vibe, it’s my ethos. (That’s why I write slacker noir novels).

I wanted to see Poolman in the theater because I prefer the theatrical experience and because I hoped my tribe—slacker noir fans—would be there too. Sadly, Poolman opened and closed so fast I never got a chance to see it on the big screen, surrounded by other slacker noir enthusiasts. Instead, we rented the movie and watched it in our living room. I’m sure the picture and the sound would’ve been better at our local multiplex, but what I really missed was the crowd.

By definition, an offbeat comedy hits the off beats. The laughs aren’t obvious. Instead of a set-up, followed by a punchline, followed by (hopefully) roars of laughter from the crowd, offbeat humor is about mining little moments that usually fly under the radar. Watching a movie like Poolman with an audience reveals the smaller, offbeat moments. The throw-away line that made the guy in the back row lose his shit? That idiosyncratic expression on an actor’s face that made you giggle uncontrollably? That incongruous moment where the comedic tone clashes with a serious setting, or vice versa? These are the offbeats. They’re perfect, little jokes aimed at a few people, but if you string enough of them together, you have the makings of a quotable movie, which is to say, you have the makings of cult classic.

But the thing about a cult classic is that it takes time to achieve that status. When I was a kid, the movie I always wanted to see was the “sleeper hit.” Usually, the sleeper hit was an offbeat comedy; sometimes it was a slacker noir. Slowly, over many years, the really good sleeper hits became cult classics. In a roundabout way, I’m talkin’ about the Dude here, to reference a not-so-deep cut from The Big Lebowski, the platonic ideal of slacker noir.

The Big Lebowski clearly inspired Poolman. The film follows Darren Barrenman (Pine), a quirky Los Angeles pool cleaner who’s obsessed with Erin Brockovich. Barrenman lives in an old apartment complex owned by Jack (Danny DeVito) and Diane (Annette Bening) who serve as oddball parental figures. Barrenman’s relationship with his girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is on the rocks, and he’s suffering from some sort of trauma that makes him what you might call a high-functioning kook. But his main schtick, aside from cleaning pools, is pitching zany ideas at city council meetings to make Los Angeles a better place to live. Which is how he becomes embroiled in a mystery that’s an homage to Chinatown and mixed up with a femme fatale.

As I said before, while I agree with the critics (to a point), I also liked Poolman. The quirky characters intrigued me. The convoluted plot, which turned out to be a deceptively simple story not unlike what you get from a noir master like Raymond Chandler, hooked me. Here and there, the offbeat jokes made me laugh. But I don’t know if I loved Poolman because I think I need another decade to think about how I truly feel.

That’s how I felt when I first saw The Big Lebowski too. I saw the movie in the theater when it came out in 1998, and I kinda sorta got it, but not really. The story is ludicrous, to quote Maude Lebowski. But the story is also straightforward, at least insofar as it asks what would happen if Philip Marlowe was a stoner seeking justice for a rug that really tied the room together? I liked The Big Lebowski the first few times I saw it, but it took many subsequent viewings, always with other fans aka Achievers, to truly fall in love with the movie.

I want to fall in love with Poolman, too. But slacker noir is a slow burn. At first, you think it’s a dumb version of a detective story, or a contrived version of a slacker comedy, but eventually, you realize it’s both things, and that together it’s fucking brilliant. That’s how slacker noir works.

Or, maybe that’s how art works. After I saw Poolman, I came across a Variety article where the film’s producer, Stacey Sher defended the movie. Sher, if you don’t know, has produced a lot of great movies. Some of my favorites include: Get Shorty, Reality Bites, Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight, Man on the Moon, Garden State, Contagion, and Django Unchained. In the Variety article, she explained why a slow burn is probably a good thing:

Quentin Tarantino may have said to me a long time ago: ‘The reviews of your movies aren’t written the weekend they come out. They are written 10, 20, 30 years after they come out. It’s all about how they endure.’ It’s a Wonderful Life got horrible reviews when it came out and there are tons of examples like that. No one was that interested in Contagion as they were when we already had a global pandemic. 

I’ll watch Poolman again next year. And I’ll probably watch it a few more times. Maybe I’ll just end up proving the critics right again and again. But maybe, in time, Poolman will find its audience and I’ll be among those who were early on a very good thing.

If you’re interested in reading a slacker noir that was inspired by The Big Lebowski and a very strange job I had as a reporter at trade publication that covered adult entertainment, check out my novel, Not Safe for Work. In the best slacker noir tradition, Not Safe for Work is slowly catching on.

Pick up a copy of Not Safe for Work on Amazon, or all the other book places.

I want to know what you think!

1. Have you seen Poolman? Have you even heard of Poolman?

2. Do you have a favorite cult classic?

3. That rug really tied the room together, did it not?

4. Has Danny DeVito ever made a bad movie?