Remarkable Power!

In Remarkable Power!, late-night talk show host Jack West (played by Kevin Nealon) is found dead at the beginning of the movie. The film flashes back to explain how we got to this point. And I assure you, it’s a complex story.

Flashback – The Jack West talk show is threatened with being cancelled. West’s life is unraveling and his wife is sleeping with a baseball player. Enter Tom Arnold as a private investigator spying on Jack West’s wife. Completely unrelated (or is it?), there’s this kid who lives in Korea Town in Van Nuys—he’s got a Winger poster on the wall and is hitting a beer can pipe, so you KNOW he’s half-retarded. The kid is watching a self-help infomercial about “Remarkable Power!” being hocked by Christopher Titus. The pot kid runs across a guy from the Remarkable Power! infomercial (wearing a neck brace) and ends up in his beach house rolling a joint. The pot kid accidentally kills the infomercial guy in his own beach house. In the mean time, a girl who runs a website that shows pictures of dead people gets photos of the dead body and sends them to the kid online to freak him out. The pot kid freaks and goes to the cops, but they don’t believe him since there is no body back at the beach house. The death-picture girl sees Tom Arnold is investigating and ends up hanging out with him and sharing info.

Flashback – The story flashes back further to explain how infomercial guy got the neck brace, and how the infomercial guy got tied up with some Russian mobsters (because he owed money to his Jewish drug dealer) (I TOLD you it was convoluted).

Flashforward a little bit – On Jack West’s last show, he brings on the guy who’s sleeping with his wife. The baseball player kills Jack West, like we saw at the beginning. The cops mistakenly think the Jewish drug dealer killed the infomercial guy. The end of this film had quite a twist that I wasn’t expecting, and ended up being pretty decent (though a bit convoluted).

In this who-dunnit film, there is some amusing character development that almost reminds me of a non-committal guy-head-nod to Tarantino. The characters are slightly over the top, but are believable in most cases. Yes, there are some unfortunate bystanders who get shot or beat up, but, all in all, the story wraps itself into a little knot that turns into a pretty bow at the conclusion of the film. I liked this one for its complexity and uncomfortable laugh scenes.