Why? Because it is unassailably good. It's an attractive, witty, perfectly cast and genuinely thrilling whodunit that will likely go down as one of the most entertaining Hollywood movies of the year. And Johnson deserves a lot of the credit. He took a genre that couldn't feel more musty -- the star-studded murder mystery -- and made it feel refreshingly new.
If there was ever a film that captures the moment we're in it's Knives Out. It's a master class in white people behaving badly -- it centers on an affluent family feuding over the fortune of their patriarch (played with feisty charm by Christopher Plummer) who has died under dubious circumstances.
The extended family are types -- for instance Don Johnson plays a prototypical upper class Trump voter and Toni Collette is note perfect as a flaky social media influence -- but the types are so well rendered and realistically spot on that it never bothered me. And the actors are so good that they all have a scene stealing moment or two.
The hero of the film is the up-and-coming Ana de Armas, who is probably best known as Ryan Gosling's synthetic dream girl in Blade Runner 2049. She takes what could have been a thankless role -- as Plummer's earnest and honest nurse -- and works wonders with it. With any luck, after this film, she will be a major star.
The movie's other MVP is Daniel Craig, who reemploys the cartoonish southern accent he had in Logan Lucky to great effect as an eccentric celebrity investigator named Benoit Blanc. So many actors who've played 007 have never been able to shake the role, but Craig strikes me as the first since Sean Connery who has a long, varied career ahead of him.
He is so hilarious here -- and still charming and sexy -- but just so delightfully silly, I wanted to see his character go on to solve more mysteries in more films. And if the early box office receipts are any indication maybe there will be.
Anytime there's something truly original like this -- even when its in a well-worn genre -- I feel like it's worth celebrating. Especially at a time when good comedies are so hard to come by I'm happy to report that I guffawed several times at this film (Craig has a running verbal gag about a donut hole that had me in stitches) and left with a big old smile plastered on my face.
That being said, there are already writers with their hot takes (not dissimilar to what happened with The Last Jedi after it opened to rave reviews) rushing to take it down as overrated and not as clever and slick as it wants to be. This is why -- I think -- when it comes to movies we can't have nice things.
Knives Out won't check every box for every person. It has some truly silly elements and it's social satire is cutting but not profound on the level of say, Get Out. But it's a rollicking good time at the movies, and that's what I think people need right now, whether they know it or not.
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