496. Veronica Mars (2014)

Starring: Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni

Director: Rob Thomas

Running Time: 107 mins

Veronica Mars is an American film, based on the TV show, about former teen private investigator, Veronica Mars, who becomes involved in a high-profile murder case amongst her high school friends in Neptune, California, years after her graduation.

Ok, I have to confess, I haven’t seen the TV show: Veronica Mars. I was unsure as to whether not seeing the show would impact on my understanding of the film, but it definitely didn’t, so I have to first say that you don’t need to have seen the show to enjoy this film, and anyway, Veronica details it pretty deeply as the film goes on.

However, I was honestly disappointed by the amount of cheese and Hollywood-ness in this film. Again, I don’t watch many, if any, American TV shows, so I’m definitely not used to the level of cheese or humour that you can get in a crime drama over there, but seeing as I thought it was so cheesy, I didn’t enjoy it at all as much.

The first hour of this film is really not that entertaining. It starts by picking up in Veronica’s life years after high school, and begins to look at her desire to return to her hometown, and pursue her life as a private investigator, which you can see that, deep beneath the surface, is what she longs to do rather than become a lawyer in New York.

That could have been an interesting story to follow, and although it may be because it was already covered in the show, the film completely drops that deeper side once she returns to Neptune, and kicks off with the high school reunion cheese.

At some points in the first hour, the film starts to develop some of the leads and aspects of the mystery actually happening, and just when you want it to grasp onto that lead, it immediately drops it, and returns to talking about the previous high school relationships, which occasionally, have little to do with the character or the story unfolding.

However, there is a big turning point pretty much after the hour mark of this film, where the whole reunion, reminiscing phase is stopped, and the current, unfolding crime becomes very deeply focussed on.

Following that, you get a much more intriguing and in-depth mystery that does in fact keep you guessing as to who did the murder, and what the motives were etc., showing a huge improvement from the beginning, and at the end, you get a thrilling finale that puts you nearly onto the edge of your seat, showing how much better the crime drama aspect of this film is.

Overall, I’ll give this a 6.6, because although its comedy and cheesy nature was very disappointing to see, there was a much more interesting, underlying mystery that, once it takes centre stage, gets very exciting.