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Can you tell me the last time you went to the movies and saw a film about a detective trying to solve a mystery? I can barely remember. Now can you tell me the last time you saw a detective procedural on TV? Well, there is Castle on Monday, NCIS on Tuesday, Criminal Minds on Wednesday… While the men in trench coats with magnifying glasses burn up your TV screens, they seem to have gone the way of the Western on the big screen unless the Private Eye’s surname is Holmes. Maybe that is why director/writer Jake Kasdan decided to very loosely revamp the famous detective as the basis for his barely seen comedy Zero Effect. Tired of watching TV detectives, I decided to give the film a go.

Bill Pullman stars as the titular Daryl Zero – the world’s most private detective (as the tagline cleverly puts it). Zero is an eccentric hermit who lounges around his house in blindly chosen clothing, writing eardrum-pounding music, seeming like an overgrown child. Only coming out of his reclusiveness as a socially functioning member of society when on an assignment, he has his assistant, Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller), to live out the other rest of his life and get him contracts. Arlo bills Zero as the world’s greatest detective to potential wealthy clients with a mystery needing solving with the utmost confidentiality. Zero’s new case is to find tight-lipped tycoon Gregory Stark’s (Ryan O’Neal) missing keys and a blackmailer harassing him for money. Attributing his finding prowess to how he detaches himself from the cases, Zero is in for a challenge, getting involved with a heart-racing paramedic (Kim Dickens) linked to the investigation.

For me I have always been more of a Ben Stiller fan than Adam Sandler when it comes to goofy, broad comedy. While they both make me laugh (although Grown Ups made me want to crawl out of my skin), where Sandler seems to have put his characters in wash-rinse-repeat mode, Stiller changes it up from the same stale formula. This is especially true in Stiller’s earlier work where he picked projects even though they might not have a chance at grossing over $100 million. Never even hearing about this film before, seeing Ben second-billed was enough for me to give it a go and I am sure glad I did.

However, Stiller plays second banana to Bill Pullman’s Daryl Zero. In a role not too far off from something Jim Carrey would take (in matter of fact his clothing looks an awful lot like a certain pet detective Carrey once played), Pullman just walks and talks to great comedic effect. Bill owns this character, giving him many tics and traits (popping amphetamines is one) as he comes out of his lavish, alarm and lock covered house into the real world. Brilliant at solving cases by under-analyzing and looking at the obvious, Zero is a quirky character that you would love to see again, much like the quirky hemaphobiac detective in another under seen laugher I love to recommend, The Darwin Awards. This film unfortunately marked the beginning of the end of Pullman’s mainstream film career (or maybe no one really noticed because like me they think Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton are the same person). However with continuously strong turns in shocking indies like the horrific Surveillance and interesting The Killer Inside Me, maybe going small was the biggest thing to happen to Pullman.

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