For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
Black comedy is not easy to pull off. When it works it creates belly laughs; when it falls flat it’s nothing but a slog. The Details is the latter.
Tobey Maguire, who still comes across as a teenager pretending to be adult, plays Jeff, a frustrated husband whose back yard has been invaded by turf eating raccoons. By trying to kill off the annoying critters he sets off a motion of events that will eventually lead to infidelity, blackmail, and finally murder, yet with all these off beat ingredients bouncing around, somehow The Details never feels enough, and it never elicits laughs.
Laura Linney plays Lila, the whacky neighbor who’s not all there, and she’s perhaps the best thing about the film. “A bunch of dust got into my house,” she complains to Jeff, knowing that he’s in the process of doing some interior work in his house. After a moment of weakness due to frustration with his wife, played by the always likable Elizabeth Banks, Jeff finds himself in a sexual tryst with the nutcase neighbor, though from the look on his face throughout the whole affair it’s not exactly a moment of ecstasy, more of a what-the-heck-am-I-thinking moment.
Watching everything in Jeff’s world go wrong, minute by minute, just isn’t fun. It should be – the put-upon central character and the extreme measures he takes is what makes a black comedy work – but the script eliminates any sense of real humor. Things happen, they’re just not that funny.
The end result leaves zero impression and I guarantee, despite the presence of good names like Ray Liotta, Kerry Washington, Banks and Linney, the instant the credits end you won’t remember a thing.
