Fletch
The legend of Chevy Chase began in 1975 when he became the breakout star during the inaugural run of Saturday Night Live, outshining John Belushi and the rest of the roster with his smooth, cocky, yet bumbling demeanor and almost overnight gained a legion of fans that would follow him wherever he would go, leading to a movie career that in the 80s saw him have a run of classic hits second only to Eddie Murphy before crashing and burning in the early 90s after starring in the disastrous Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (which unwisely tried to make him over into an action star) along with having a late night talk show that was considered to be such an unmitigated failure that he found himself literally and unfairly blackballed out of the entertainment industry while making only sporadic appearances since. But that 80s run still stands in all of its glory with a major highlight being this 1985 comedy based on the first entry in a series of novels by Gregory McDonald about a wisecracking investigative reporter who always gets the job done to solve the case while utilizing a never ending series of wacky disguises and aliases to do so. McDonald was actually given final say on casting here, and it was he who personally handpicked Chase for his signature character despite the fact that he must have known that at some point it was going to descend into an all out one liner filled Chevy Chase comedy, and it did, but thatâs the masterstroke of the whole thing, as McDonaldâs fairly gritty story, situations, and supporting characters are all still present here, even as some of the more darker plot elements of the original novel are expunged from the movie (Fletch was actually shooting up heroin to maintain his cover as a beach junkie, he was having sexual relations with an underage junkie runaway, etc.), but combining McDonaldâs style of mystery / thriller with Chevyâs glib, off handed sense of humor actually works wonderfully to most extents when it comes to him connecting with the original characterâs famously well known wiseass attitude, coupled with a funky electronic score by Harold Faltermeyer that in essence makes this film into Chaseâs Beverly Hills Cop. The film begins with Fletch working undercover on the beach trying to crack the case of whoâs supplying the heroin to all of the junkies that practically seem to live there with the main dealer being the out of it Fat Sam (George Wendt in an early pre-Cheers appearance), dressing like a slob and seeming to fit in amongst the needle jockeys like a glove. Suddenly, an unexpected occurance takes place when he is approached by a well dressed, clean cut young man (Tim Matheson, settling into character acting mode after seeming bound for stardom following Animal House) who brings him back to his home with a bizarre proposition: He wants Fletch to murder him, with the reason being that heâs facing a long, painful death from bone cancer and he doesnât want neither he nor his family to suffer through it. Fletch accepts the offer at face value (even though Matheson obviously doesnât grasp that he picked the WRONG guy to make this offer to) and immediately sidetracks his current investigation to dig into Mathesonâs life and background, only to learn quickly that the man most definitely does NOT have cancer after a trip to see his doctor (M. Emmett Walsh) and soon learns even more, such as him having two wives, one of whom (the extremely cute Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is a spoiled, rich heiress with a nonetheless sweet disposition whom Matheson is just using for both her and her fatherâs money to support himself and his REAL wife (who is never shown onscreen but would appear to be his true love) as they are preparing to flee the country with all the money that heâs scammed off of people (thus the fake staged murder where Fletchâs corpse would be substituted for his own), including as it turns out, the masterminds of the beach heroin ring, a random plot twist that really shouldnât work (and doesnât) not only because of Mathesonâs unbelievable stupidity in picking a junkie from the very beach that theyâre dealing out of in order to carry out the scam with, but also because itâs never made very clear at all just exactly what role or purpose that Matheson served with them in the first place, since he seemed to have his own little deal going on with his rich wife and her fatherâs aviation company, but it does give an excuse to wrap the plot up all nice and neat at the climax of the film. Turns out that the heroin is being dealt by the local police chief (Joe Don Baker) and his entire corrupt department, properly hiding and coordinating their operation by having the junkies pretend to get arrested before being brought back to the beach and delivering it to Wendt (who is said to never leave the beach) for distribution. Aside from these raw story details, the real delight is in watching Chase deal with everything from life threatening mortal danger to a series of simpleminded rednecks while in disguise to his ex wifeâs money grubbing lawyer (whom he has dealt with for so long that they actually have a mild rapport that almost resembles friendship) all while facing a deadline and constantly being harassed by his manic editor (Richard Libertini) and working with his hot female assistant named âLarryâ who seems to have a major crush on him (Geena Davis right before her career took off into the stratosphere) as he maintains that same, wry, sardonic wit that epitomized both McDonaldâs literary character and Chaseâs own SNL personality most notably with his appearances on Weekend Update. Itâs also heartening to see a (good) story about the tenets of oldschool investigative journalism, where a lone reporter would delve into cases that law enforcement couldnât be bothered to touch, going undercover and risking his life in order to uncover corruption and / or criminal activity while taking the credit in the end for cracking the case wide open and leaving the police to collect his evidence and clean up the mess after him, something that we donât see much of these days except for cutesy examples on the occasional cable news network, all helmed adequately by one Michael Ritchie, a director who surprisingly had more than a few good movies on his resume, even coming back to direct Chase in a sequel that was a failure right out of the gate due to them using the Fletch character in an original story and not even bothering to buy up the rights to any one of the 20+ sequel books that McDonald had written! Even then, the use of action / comedy clichĂ©s still rears its ugly head now and again, such as when Fletch is fleeing an armed bad guy in his car, who aims and fires and (of course) blows out the back windshield of the vehicle, and some of the scenes where Fletch is in disguise and tries to bullshit his way around people (like a couple of redneck airline mechanics) fall a little flat due to an innate lack of comic zip. But Chevy does carry himself off beautifully, possessing the looks and charisma of a movie star but the attitude of a clown who never allows anyone or anything to ever get the best of him, as when he witnesess the verbal abuse administered by an arrogant old rich man towards a young waiter at a country club that heâs staking out before telling the staff that heâs the rich manâs guest and then charging up a storm on the guyâs account, to gently comforting and then seducing the broken hearted heiress when he tells her what her husbandâs really been up to (and her character continued to be an on again off again love interest for Fletch in the books) to leading the cops on a wild chase by blithely stealing a car and then even more blithely outwitting them at some sort of old peopleâs function for a guy named Fred (The Dorf) Dorfman by leading the room in the national anthem as the fact remains that Chase is a guy who almost never lets his comedic guard down in even the most dire situations. Which is why we get what we get here, a high quality comedy with the almost unprecedented successful fusion of an actorâs own persona with the literary character that he was born to play, and which no sequel or reboot with a less talented modern day comedic actor should ever even touchâŠ
9/10