The Kid Detective review – charming, funny, and surprisingly bittersweet

Brody stars as Abe Applebaum, a depressive 32-year-old private eye who is in a bit of a rut. He was the toast of his hometown when he was a child. Solving cute mysteries, making the local paper, and receiving free ice cream as payment. He has solved over 200 cases in his time. The trouble is they are relatively trivial. Still, while showing a real aptitude for human behavior, he is no longer fulfilled, and he became a town clown. He drowns in his own self-pity and substance use, only to have a teenaged client name Caroline (The Book Thief’s Sophie Nelisse) walked into his office — she wants to know who murdered her 16-year-old boyfriend.

The Kid Detective is a Canadian import from freshman director Evan Morgan. This is his directorial feature debut and it’s an impressive one, especially when you think of a first-time feature having to juggle comedy and mystery, and he manages to build some genuine suspense. All of that is layered with a three-dimensional performance by Brody that weaves in moments of humor and melancholy. If any part of his performance fails, the movie does as well. For Morgan, that’s not bad for a guy whose main credits come from a handful of Goosebumps episodes in the nineties as a child actor. Then again, maybe that is where he found the inspiration.