"There is no great genius without some touch of madness." Seneca

Darryl Zero is the world's greatest, and most eccentric, private detective and charges fee high enough to match his status. So why would anyone, even a millionaire, want to pay those sorts of fees in order to hire Zero to recover his...lost keys? Of course there's more to it then that and before its all over Zero and his assistant Steve Arlo, will find themselves caught up in a case involving murder, blackmail and the lady who will become known to Zero as The Woman.

The Zero Effect is an amazingly good movie. Darryl Zero joins the ranks of the truly great intellectual detectives such as Sherlock Holmes (a cocaine addict), Nero Wolfe (an almost total recluse) or Hercule Poirot (a preening egotist) who despite, or perhaps because of, their genius are all slightly...nuts. The story and all of its characters are all quirky and just a little off center, but in such a way as to make them interesting and ultimately more believable. If you enjoy a good mystery this one is pretty well done with just enough clues to allow the viewer to figure out ahead of time the solution to the puzzle. The best part of The Zero Effect though is the acting. Bill Pullman, playing Darryl Zero, and Ben Stiller, playing Steve Arlo, his assistant a la Dr. Watson both give absolutely tremendous performances not to mention having a great of on screen chemistry together. One scene in particular stands out in my mind as Zero describes how his parents died when he was a child in one of the best, if not the best, displays of acting I've ever seen. As he talks about his parents' death Pullman allows two or three separate emotions to play across Zero's face at one time. A standout performance in a film already filled with excellent work.

The only flaw to The Zero Effect is that in places it almost seems to want to cross over into a parody of detective fiction especially when Zero or Arlo refer to one of their previous cases with outlandish names as "The Case of the Man With the Mismatched Shoelaces". Still, while it walks the line on doing this several times it never quite crosses over and the movie maintains an unconventional, but realistic tone throughout the film. I was also disappointed that the film's only true `villain', who is guilty of having committed some fairly heinous crimes, is allowed to go on with his life unimpeded. Zero even has physical evidence by the end of the film connecting this villain to at least one of those crimes, which for some unknown reason he returns to the villain.

Those are minor nits however and ultimately The Zero Effect is a very well done detective film with heroes that are not zeros and whom I would enjoy seeing in further adventures.

Grade: A+

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