Detective Darling by Joel Kaiser (butter) - Comedy - A dorky bachelor moves to the seedy side of town and is seduced into looking for a missing person who is mixed up with a shady bicycle courier gang. 113 pages - pdf, format

I read through page 27 (I ended at the scene at the bottom 1/4 of the page).

In my opinion, comedy is the hardest of all the genre of script to read.  So much of comedy is facial expression, vocal tone, and other forms of acting.  I get that and I want to respect that.  But, man, I'd love to actually have some laughs in the first act.

This seems like an indie comedy (from the first act) and those are, obviously, tough sells on the spec scene.

The dialogue runs long in most scenes.  Nearly every actual scene is far too long (in my personal opinion, of course).  I have no idea what clear goals the characters have.  And, again - it's only the first act...but it seems like you should be able to convey a clear goal in that time period...even in a comedy.

Another problem is that the ensuing event happens at page 25-26 (though, to be fair, you allude to the kidnapping on page 1).  That seems WAY too late for me.   Is there a way you can shorten the opening apartment scenes to get to the ensuing event at page 12-15 (somewhere thereabouts).  This gives you time for Carlos to debate how he could possibly be involved for at least another scene or two - thus making the payoff into Act two WAY better.

I'll give a script Act One to entice me to read more.  I feel like I would, most likely, not read the rest of this.  So far, the logline and the first act don't add up to something that truly interests me.  

I'd love to see what someone else thinks.

Chazz