The film opens with narration reminding us of the global place of storytellers in the world who can pierce the boundary of life and death and good and evil with their music. As if not trusting the audience to recall the opening narration, the words about great musicians piercing timelines reappear halfway through the film when Sammie begins to sing his song at the juke t. The words of the narration come to life as Sammie’s aching blues intersperse with…

Have you ever seen a movie deconstructing itself? There’s a metatextual quality to the narrative progression here that’s right up my alley. The Kid Detective morphs from wish-fulfilment comedy to ambivalent arrested-development comedy to a mordant mixture of both then to satire before it shifts to a chilling psychological drama with flourishes that seems almost unpredictable. But the through-line, which the film progressively develops, is that this is a story of a man working through issues of depression and guilt…