Veronica
Mars is one of the best female characters to arrive on the pop cultural
landscape in the past decade. Played with indelible humor by Kristen Bell,
Veronica was a too-smart-to-be-cynical teen detective who channeled her anger and
sense of justice into the righting the wrongs in her the-rich-versus-the-poor
hometown of Neptune, California. She’s a latter-day Humphrey Bogart in a hoodie
and sneakers, and her homme fatale was
Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), the rich screw-up son of a has-been movie star.
Veronica’s
story will continue in her big-screen sequel to the TV show that bore her name.
A featurette-type trailer for the Kickstarter-funded film debuted online last
week, and it’s, well, a little disappointing. The heavy focus on the love
triangle between Veronica’s old flame Logan and her current beau, the bland Piz
(Chris Lowell), distracts from our heroine’s best qualities — her intelligence,
wit, and passion for the truth — and makes the film like the latest edition of
“Choosing Boyfriends: The Movie,” Buffy creator
Joss Whedon’s derisive phrase for a lot of teen-marketed movies today.
Thankfully,
the larger plot of the film has Veronica resuming her detective work in order
to exonerate Logan from a murder charge.
Watch the trailer below:
