Chris Pine’s Directorial Debut Bombs Very, Very Hard

Chris Pine’s Directorial Debut Bombs Very, Very Hard

Chris Pine’s directorial debut Poolman had people walking out of the theater midway through.

Chris Pine has had an interesting career. After being on top of the box office world with his role as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot series shepherded by JJ Abrams, Pine seemingly laid low for a few years before returning to major stardom with roles in Wonder Woman and most recently in the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which made a heck of a lot of money.

Though of course none of those movies seemed to generate the buzz (for better or worse) that Pine’s role last year in the controversial film Don’t Worry Darling did. Who can forget the spit-scandal when Harry Styles apparently spit on Pine, (though later claimed he didn’t.) Well, hopefully that situation got Chris used to some bad press, because he is in for a whole lot more of it this week.

Everything started optimistically enough, with Chris Pine coming to the Toronto International Film Festival to debut his new film Poolman which he also starred in. While actors don’t always have the best luck transitioning into directing, there was some hope for Pine considering the film was at least selected. But as soon as the film started things went downhill, and fast. In fact the film caused numerous walk outs during its screening, and is being widely considered one of the worst movies to ever play at a major film festival.

A number of actors-turned-directors have populated this year’s TIFF, including Michael Keaton and Ethan Hawke, in what is now being viewed as a deliberate move to ensure celebrity attendance amidst the ongoing strike situation. Poolman is definitely contributing to that perception. The film apparently begins innocently enough, but soon devolves into what Indie Wire calls “a headache-inducing cacophony of first-draft scribblings” as characters endlessly talk over each other and the plot doesn’t really ever become compelling.

Ultimately the whole thing mostly serves to embarrass Pine and the festival as a whole. It’s a disappointing outcome for the many Chris Pine-superfans out there, but perhaps shows how naive we were to think he could successfully direct. All too often actors mistakenly believe they can make the leap into directing. In many cases this is the result. Perhaps we can see this as a major consequence of the strike: revealing the many, many awful movies that come out that usually don’t see the light of day. Hopefully it will end soon.