I love this movie so much

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a rather obscure and cultish film from Jake Kasdan (son of Lawrence Kasdan). Bill Pullman is 'the world's greatest detective' Daryl Zero. The plot is loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes story 'A Scandal in Bohemia.'Zero besides being a great detective is quirky and a misanthrope. He never meets or has direct contact with his clients. Instead he leaves it to his put upon assistant, Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller).Zero and Arlo are hired by a millionaire Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal) who has lost the key to a safe deposit box and is being blackmailed by an unknown person who forces him to follow elaborate instructions to deliver the cash payments.From early on in the film you see Zero is very much a combination of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes as well as Nero Wolfe. Pullman delivers an intense and yet distant performance very much in keeping with his character. Ben Stiller in an early role plays the everyman role, dedicated to and yet also frustrated by Zero.The film is small scale and enjoyable which depends on its actors to deliver the goods. Jake Kasdan never gets the pacing entirely right and its debt to Conan Doyle is rather obvious.

Filmed in Portland, Jake Kasdan's "Zero Effect" casts Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller as detectives investigating who is blackmailing Ryan O'Neal's character...but things aren't quite what they seem. It's a quirky movie, with some really interesting scenes of taking the bus back and forth. Not a great movie, but I liked it. I actually got Pullman's autograph during the filming. One of the sets was located not far from my school, so some of the other students and I got Pullman's autograph. He was a really nice guy.Like I said, it's not a masterpiece or anything, but I thought that it's worth seeing.

I couldn't find the planetarium in the Movie. I saw it on TV so I can't back it up to check the name, but it was something like MacRidges or MacFadridge, Does anyone know if there is really such a planetarium or did they make up the name? It would seem silly to do so. I did enjoy the movie, and to me too it seemed a precursor of Monk. I also don't think we'll ever get bored with the Holmes and Watson combination theme either. Overall a great whodunit with plenty of plot twists and foreshadowing. Ben Stiller was great as usual in his supporting role. I wouldn't mind seeing a Zero 2 myself. I was impressed with the directing and also the photography in this movie. It was clear, easy to see, and therefore easier to follow the plot.

The cast in this movie is well thought out!! Bill Pullman plays Detective Daryl Zero, and he is a consortium of unorthodox emotions!! Your initial perception of him being one whereby he is an amphetamine freak, who chants like a castrated country rock singer, and drinks 68 cans of Tab in a single day!! Concocting irrational conclusions for everything is Daryl Zero's favorite hobby, and, all of his ersatz proclivities, which unalterably require a necessary detachment, are peculiar enough to put him in either Belvue or Believe it or Not!! He can astutely characterize a white collar criminal, and speak six different languages, yet, he is incapable of filling out a tax form!! With regard to something or someone being hazardous, Daryl Zero should come with a personalized warning label which reads: Compared to this guy, arsenic seems like an innocuous and palatable beverage!!The movie starts off with Gregory Stark, (Ryan O'Neal) who is the anonymously wealthy guy. Stark has now become the aggrieved recipient of blackmail!! Steve Arlo, (Ben Stiller) plays Detective Zero's business manager, Steve (Ben Stiller) manufactures a mystique about Detective Zero through a bastardized affidavit containing a bevy of counter culture mannerisms!! Arlo (Ben Stiller) presents a cogent case to Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal) that Daryl Zero's doggerel of accomplishments consists of numerous radical approaches and techniques which serve as a means of being the most effective method to "cracking the case"!! Desperate and annoyed by pecuniary depletion from a petty (yet stinging) series of blackmail tactics,Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal) is ready to give way to the unconventional!!! Consummation of this deal opens up the floodgates for an onslaught of nuances to surface which everyone in the movie becomes besieged with.. Daryl Zero's prescience is profound in his ability at pinpointing the perpetrator to this blackmail crime!! This film provides a precarious pontification to many different ideological premises for all parties concerned!! More importantly, it should be established that the trivial details and innate intricacies of everyone's sordid human nature, are far more significant to the plot of this movie, than the overall complications which pertain to this film's resonating end results!! The two OB's; observation and objectivity, guide Detective Zero in the direction of satiating his desires to resolve everything... This acute homogenization of deductive logic is what is referred to in this film as the "Zero Effect"!!This movie is loaded with talent, the writing is particularly well thought out, and the innovative genre to this film makes it intellectually gratifying to watch!!! All is well, but ends well, however, it is not manifested in the proverbially neon accented format that people are accustomed to when viewing a film with a happy ending.. Everyone's aggravated afflictions are related to their environment, and, Detective Zero's concluding jeremiad, which establishes a mandatory closure on the whole blackmail issue, winds up getting categorized accordingly!! That being said, let's put it behind us, it's over, so why not just go sky diving, or attend someone's funeral or something!! Extremely well made film. It is Crazy with a capital "C". I am very glad that I saw it!!!