We don’t actually see Phillip until half-way through the film. Hugh Grant doesn’t make for a very convincing butler. I think it was purposely left vague. Perhaps it will be reveled in the next film that he is Blanc’s brother or Dr. Watson type colleague just to prove everybody wrong.
IMDB had this to say:
This film hints that Benoit Blanc is a gay man in the flashback scene which reveals the man who opens the door in his apartment while Blanc is in the bathtub is Phillip (played in cameo by Hugh Grant). Daniel Craig said this was deliberately alluded to in the script
I mean… I find it hard to believe that anyone could watch the movie and not assume that Blanc was gay.
The voice of the “hourly dong” was Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
We see him using it to endanger, and thereby show off the overrideable defenses for, the Mona Lisa — which maybe even means the only reason he has it is so the Mona Lisa can, well, get endangered by someone who knows how to work the override.
In my post, I originally referred to it as “Chekhov’s Lighter” but then changed my mind since it didn’t quite fit. Turns out I would have been right, even if it was for the wrong reason.
I liked it a lot, although I agree that the ending was a bit of a letdown. One thing that really bugged me was the level of care people took to either preserve or not preserve the napkin. First, Miles keeps it rather than destroying it… and even if he’s supposed to be kinda dumb that just seems beyond comprehension. Then Andi (Helen) finds it and just waves it around in his face, rather than hiding it and pretending she doesn’t have it, or taking a zillion photos and uploading them to the cloud, or, honestly, literally anything other than what she did.
Still, overall, a TON of fun.
I have known this fact about the Mona Lisa ever since sometime in the early mid-1960s, thanks to My Favorite Martian, of all things. It was a plot point in one of the episodes.
When the guests arrive on the beach, Miles is playing Blackbird on a guitar, which he says is the one Paul Mccartney wrote it on. Except Paul played left-handed guitars, and that one is right-handed. Of course, Miles could be lying.
I noticed that among the glass items Helen breaks at the end are a Maltese Falcon replica from the 1941 film and a Jeff Koons balloon dog. Did anyone else notice any other recognizable items in glass?
…Miles has a Rothko hanging up in his house, and it’s upside down.
Everything’s a lie, an inbreathiate exaggeration, a predefinite mistake.
I noticed that as well, but for one reason or another I didn’t think too much of it. One could argue that since Miles could play guitar, he would almost certainly be aware that Paul plays left handed and simply had the guitar restrung (he’s not playing it upside down). Or maybe someone just sold him a random guitar for a ton of money, or
We haven’t really discussed that angle have we? We keep talking about how he’s so rich that people can sell him knockoffs and he seems to assume they’re real based on what he’s told and/or what he’s paid for them. Have we considered that he’s aware they’re fake and he has them scattered around the house as a way to appear wealthier than he is?
Showing potential investors (or people you need to blackmail) all this expensive stuff can certainly go a long way in convincing them you’re successful at whatever it is you do.
AKA - Fake it till you make it.
Brancusi’s sculpture “Bird in Space” was another one that came to mind. I forget which other ones I noticed.
Fun but slightly underwhelming.
Perhaps needed more than 3 factions.
The shitheads were too much of a bloc.
I did like the stoner being irrelevant.
And then keep faking it because it’s clearly working there’s not a compelling reason to stop.
In the opening sequence, did anyone else get the sense that the actor playing Duke was channeling Beau of the Fifth Column (mannerisms, not content) when he was recording his video.
The slider puzzle at that link isn’t the same one from the movie, and once you solve it all you get to do is post how many moves it took. There’s no more puzzles after that.
In the movie, the puzzles were:
Stereogram that shows you where to press to open the box.
Chess board represented by red & blue pegs, no indication which piece is which, but only 3 pieces which have to be pawns have been moved. So the challenge is in realizing it’s a chess board.
Tic-tac-toe board where you have to realize it represents dots & dashes & tap it out.
Slider puzzle, which is easily solvable. But then you have to realize the “N” in the puzzle stands for north, and rotate the entire box to point north.
Music box playing Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor. Which you have to know is a tune layered on top of itself, and lift the center wheel of the box.
The next 3 they didn’t really explain - a Fibonacci sequence, an abacus, a star map, and the final one realizing the metal was silver and you had to enter its atomic number.
Clearly not a butler. He told Kareem that Benoit hadn’t been out of the bath for a week, then when Benoit asked him to answer the door he yelled back “You’re not in the bath again, are you?” Way too familiar for a butler. And Phillips reply implied that he doesn’t want to answer the door (because as we saw later he’s busy in the kitchen), and it isn’t a given that that’s his job.
Then in the middle of the movie when we see Hugh Grant, he yells “Blanc! There’s someone here for you. With a box.” Butlers generally don’t call their employers by their last name only.
Neither do boyfriends…
Maybe they do if they’re annoyed at them, for having to leave the kitchen to answer the door while the boyfriend has been lounging in the bath for a week.
That’s odd. It certainly appeared to contain (at least) 4 puzzles. Glad I didn’t spent too much time on it.
It did look like there were 4, and it even said it would unlock more puzzles. But once you solve the slider it just shows you a trailer of the movie and lets you post your score on the slider puzzle.