Planets align for Veronica Mars fans
Crowd- funded sequel will please devotees of TV show, others may be less likely to feel the love
Apologies right off the bat. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of the three seasons of Veronica Mars; I just never watched it at all. I’m sure it was swell. In 2006, its midpoint, no less a body than the American Film Institute named it one of the 10 best shows that year. I could kickstart myself for not having tuned in.
But here we are, eight years later, and a crowd- funded big- screen sequel has arrived. Veronica Mars the movie finds the former teenage detective ( Kristen Bell) now living in New York City with boyfriend Piz ( Chris Lowell) and about to start work as a lawyer.
But as anyone with a passing knowledge of astronomy knows, Neptune, Calif., can exert quite a pull. Veronica hears that her old classmate Carrie Bishop, now going by her pop- star stage name Bonnie DeVille, has been murdered back in their seaside hometown.
Worse, Bonnie’s boyfriend ( and Veronica’s ex) is the prime suspect. His name is Logan ( Jason Dohring), and he rings her up to see if she can help clear his name — you know, for old times’ sake.
It’s a creaky opening to a movie that aims to recreate the high school camaraderie and cliques of the original series while also trying to fill the larger canvas of a motion picture. But every time it succeeds at one ambition, it falters at the other. There are moments when you can almost feel the action pausing for a commercial break.
Of course, Veronica drops everything ( including Piz, whom she later praises for being so steadfast and boring — never a good sign for a movie relationship) and hightails it to the west coast. The gang’s all here, more or less, including series regulars Enrico Colantoni as Veronica’s dad, Krysten Ritter as the snarky Gia Goodman and Percy Daggs III and Tina Majorino as pals Wallace and Mac.
There’s also Gaby Hoffmann as Ruby Jetson, DeVille’s No. 1 fan and, in Veronica’s eyes, the No. 1 suspect, not least because she has a “crazy- ass murderer wall” shrine to the pop star. The fact that Ruby wasn’t in the original series bodes well for her to be ( A) guilty, ( B) a red herring or ( C) marked for death. Or quite possibly all of the above.
Veronica sleuths her way through the case and the inevitable high school reunion that coincides with it. Along the way she butts heads with the town’s inept and corrupt police department, which hasn’t been the same since her dad got voted out of the office of sheriff in a crooked election.
It soon becomes apparent there’s more than just one death driving the plot. Neptune can hold a lot of bodies, and when it comes to skeletons in closets, those California mansions have the walk- in kind.
The movie contains many a knowing wink to the series, including a busker version of the theme song We Used to Be Friends, and — well, I don’t know of any others but I’m assured they exist. But the plot, as skinny as a latte and just as filling, won’t win any new converts to the defunct series.
And maybe that’s not what it’s trying to do. The behind- the-camera crew is just as familiar as the cast. Series writer Diane Ruggiero co- wrote the screenplay with series creator Rob Thomas, who also directs. And some 90,000 fans brought the lion’s share of the film’s financing. They should all be pleased with the results. The rest of us may as well be from Venus for all the relevance Mars in Neptune has.