Film

The Disappearance of Kevin Johnson (1995)

Director: Francis Megahy

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A British documentary crew, making a feature about Hollywood Brits, wants to interview prospective mogul Kevin Johnson. Then Johnson's announced missing. No one's perturbed, so the film-makers start to investigate, interviewing studio execs and estate agents, screenwriters and gardeners, girlfriends, starlets, models and waitresses. This 'mockumentary' (from a former BBC documentarist) is structured like Spinal Tap, looks like Heidi Fleiss - Hollywood Madam, and appears to have broadly scandalous (if light hearted) ambitions in the vein of The Player. With its enigmatic central figure set against the hermetic, shallow and guileful ways of LA's movie-making class, the movie recalls diverse examples of great American art: Gatsby, Kane, Sunset Boulevard, The Long Goodbye. Deliberate or not, this multiplicity of reference points fails the film, since essentially it's never anything more than slight, diverting entertainment.

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