The Kid Detective, a 2020 dark comedy-thriller starring Adam Brody, is being highlighted as an overlooked film that never found its audience because of its pandemic-era release, when cinemas were largely empty and word-of-mouth theatrical buzz was impossible. Six years before earning an Emmy nomination for Netflix's Nobody Wants This, Brody delivered what is arguably his best screen performance in this satire of children's detective fiction, playing a washed-up former child-prodigy sleuth forced to confront a real murder case.

Brody plays Abe Applebaum, a once-celebrated boy detective in the town of Willowbrook who was traumatised after failing to solve a friend's disappearance as a child, and who now coasts on former glory while running an unimpressive small-time detective agency. The plot kicks in when teenager Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) asks him to investigate her boyfriend's murder, a case far beyond anything he's handled since childhood, forcing him to prove his early gifts weren't a fluke. The film blends dark comedy with genuine pathos, undercutting nostalgia for series like Encyclopedia Brown and The Hardy Boys while portraying Abe as both sympathetic and narcissistic, right down to his running gag of a lifetime free ice cream pass he still claims two decades on.