The Kid Detective suffers from too much tonal discord

Cast: Adam Brody,

Sophie Nélisse Director: Evan Morgan

Duration: 1 h 37m

As a child, I used to read the mid-century exploits of Danny Dunn, a precocious redhead with an interest in science. Other kids were presumably lost in tales of Tom Corbett, space cadet, or detective Nancy Drew. The Kid Detective starts with an irresistible premise: What happens to these fictional child geniuses when they grow up?

In writer-director Evan Morgan's feature debut, they turn into Adam Brody's character, still solving crimes in the small town of Willowbrook. Alas, cracking the latest petty misdemeanour of the Red Shoe Gang or locating a lost cat seems less glamorous when you're in your mid-30s than when you were in Grade 7 and operating out of a treehouse. Brody's Abe Applebaum is depressed and listless. A professional break comes his way in the person of Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), a local high-schooler who wants Abe to investigate the murder of her boyfriend, a crime the local police have been unable to crack. Alas, delving into a modern-day murder also reminds Abe of the big case he was never able to solve, when his friend Gracie Gulliver disappeared in broad daylight back in the day.

The notion of a high school detective (even a grown-up one), will remind many of Brick, writer-director Rian Johnson's brilliant debut feature from 2005, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young gumshoe. Unfortunately, The Kid Detective doesn't stack up, perhaps because of an inconsistency in tone. What starts as broad comedy — how dark can it be when your protagonist solves the Scooby-Doo-like mystery of the missing time capsule? — gradually grows more severe and intense, until it ends with a scene straight out of — well, if I told you I'd be spoiling the movie, but suffice to say it ain't Scoob!

Brody holds up his end of the bargain — the guy can do sad-sack sardonic snark in his sleep. But Nélisse seems a little too self-assured to be playing 16, and few of the remaining characters get the chance to make an impression, except perhaps Peter MacNeill as the school's long-serving principal. His conversations with Abe subtly show how both of them have fallen behind the times — crime solving isn't what it was back at the turn of the century, and neither is high school.

Viewers who can handle the rather abrupt changes in pitch may get more out of The Kid Detective, which does at least hold our attention with a simmering mystery and the promise of a payoff.

For me, I found this kid's story too ramshackle and fidgety to truly enjoy.