Veronica Mars
I never watched Rob Thomas’s TV series, “Veronica Mars,” when it was on between 2004-2007. I had heard about it, to be sure, between websites and fans I worked with, but never did take the plunge and dig in to it. Last year, when a Kickstarter campaign to get a feature film made broke records, and made headlines, resulted in the film to be reviewed here, the time was set for me to finally make the leap.
Unlike other movies from cult TV shows, like “The X-Files” and “Serenity,” I was coming into this world completely uninitiated. Thankfully, screenwriters Thomas (who also directs) and Diane Ruggiero have prepared for such an occasion, and made an opening sequence that serves to give us everything we need to know to navigate through Veronica’s world, and the seaside town of Neptune, California. Once that was done, the title popped on screen, and the film began proper, I felt like I had everything I needed to know in order to follow Veronica (Kristen Bell, a beautiful, smart, and sassy treat in the role) as she gets sucked into the investigation into the death of a fellow Neptune alum, which, right now, is pointing in the direction of Logan (Jason Dohring), her ex-boyfriend who was also the hot-headed boyfriend of the deceased, a pop singer whose last album, “Confessions,” made hold the key to her death.
There were a lot of times when I just had to go with the people in the audience’s reactions to characters and reunions since I didn’t know all of the relationships going in, but the characters, and dialogue, is so well-honed by Thomas and his cast that it made the film seem like much less work than it could have been, and believe me, I’m grateful for that extra effort on their part. In order for the film to work as a whole, it needed to be a strong mystery story first and foremost, not just a reunion with old friends, and the cast and crew understood that perfectly. As a result, I could just sit back and enjoy the movie as a movie, which was very easy to do. Even if this were a stand-alone film about a young woman with an insatiable sense of curiosity that leads to her becoming a private detective, I would have been hooked every step of the way. Knowing that there are three seasons worth of stories out there, though, with Bell’s plucky Veronica turning to sleuthing after the death of her best friend in high school (who happened to be going out with Logan at the time– enter the soap opera), and investigating the underbelly of a seemingly-chipper, affluent town only makes the film’s success that much more evident, because it made a new fan out of me, to be sure.
My favorite moments in the film revolved not around the soapy stuff with Veronica and Logan or any of the other Neptune alum, although as flavor to the juicy story, it worked wonderfully, but between Veronica and her father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), who used to be the sheriff in Neptune, but was pushed out due to the corrupt reality of the town, and became a private eye himself, which is what pushed Veronica (who, in her time away from Neptune, went through law school, and is about to take a job with a New York firm) into the business herself. Bell and Colantoni bring out the best in one another with a rapport that is flawlessly written, and perfectly performed. If you told me these two were father and daughter in real-life, I would believe it, and watching the way Veronica and Keith interact, and push one another, while also showing love for the other, makes it one of the best examples of a parent-child relationship in modern pop culture. So long as Veronica and Keith, and the actors who play them, are around, I can definitely get behind more adventures with “Veronica Mars” in the future. As someone who knows what it’s like for fans when a show they fall in love with gets the axe (after all, I’m a Joss Whedon fan), I’m glad that fans are getting a second chance to capture that magic, and bring in people on the secret they knew all along. I see where they’re coming from.
