THE SINGING DETECTIVE (3 outta 5 stars) Excellent main performance by Robert Downey Jr. as a writer of detective stories who is stricken with a horrible skin disease which makes his every movement extremely painful. He is basically trapped in his hospital bed and at the mercy of the doctors, nurses and attendants. With nothing else to do he begins to hallucinate... mixing up plots of his novels with personal details from his past. Also people he talks to tend to start lip-syncing old 50s tunes for no particular reason. Mel Gibson has a great supporting role as a psychiatrist who thinks that there may be a psychological component to Downey's suffering and seeks to get to the bottom of it. Odd, little film has a lot of interesting scenes and characters... unfortunately there are a number of scenes that kind of fall flat, too. Not to worry, the movie is still well worth seeing... if for no other reason than to see a balding Mel. Gibson produced the movie... which is probably the only reason they were able to afford to get him in a small, independent movie like this.