Chase Vehicle Chases Axel Cash
DIRECTED BY: MICHAEL RITCHIE/1985
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: MAY 7, 2024/KINO LORBER STUDIO CLASSICS
Chevy Chase’s Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher wanders straight-backed and hand-pocketed into the next bit of plot, so we know he’s at least engaged enough to show up, but his eyes, at half-mast and ever-sidelong, are not so much scrutinizing the scene for salient clues as looking for the thing to hook his schtick to. This flip, ‘80s version of Fletch, born from Gregory McDonald’s darker, meaner ‘70s books, seems constructed out of equally potent strands of early Letterman’s above-it sarcasm and Elliott Gould’s smugly mumbling Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, all three tall, glib, but earnest when they have to be. Here, Fletch is a shambling, low-talking extension of whatever mileage Chase got out of the lean and tall condescension that was his trademark as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player, but with the extra dollop of self-satisfaction that cannot be helped when reveling in recent big-screen success (mostly 1983’s Vacation). Tie all that audience expectation to the proven confection that was the previous year’s Beverly Hills Cop – watch the SNL alum drift through gag-filled sleuthing on a bed of driving Harold Faltermeyer synths – and the formula’s as good as a sub-genre.
We may have come to watch Chase don his cheeky Fletch garb, but it’s not like we’re not into the plot, too. The mystery at the center of the story is based on McDonald’s first Fletch novel and is actually written tightly enough by screenwriter Andrew Bergman that it acts as a kind of centripetal force on the otherwise ambling Fletch character, pulling his surface assholery into a soft concern that moves finally into a genuine urgency. We like Fletch because nearly from the start, the movie’s begun its work of revealing that underneath his soft-spoken insolence and wisecracking cynicism, is a heart that actually does beat for the kind of justice that should motivate an avowed investigative reporter. Up front, he finds the animus of his chosen profession amongst L.A.’s driftwood lowlifes, going undercover to draw out a scoop on the drugs passing through the Santa Monica Pier, and we buy him in all of that because we buy that he actually seems to care about what he’s doing. Later, he’s sidetracked from his beach-front project by a rich guy (Tim Matheson) who thinks Fletch is just one of the bums and wants him to put him anonymously out of his cancer-ridden misery with a bullet to his head. By that point, we believe Fletch’s sideways sincerity (“…Sure.”) when he doesn’t just dismiss the guy as a kook, but instead starts to follow clues down to the bottom of the morbid request.
We always know we’re inside the plot proper when Chase’s Bugs Bunny mug cinches up into a respectable curiosity. It’s watching the accidental detective follow logic toward the rather expected nexus of the two plot strands (corrupt police chief Joe Don Baker) that at once makes us interested in the movie as a movie – it’s eventually full of legit intrigue – and as an excuse for Chase to spread comedy wherever he goes. We signed a tacit contract during the opening credits: when we watch Fletch, we’re really watching Chevy Chase savor a throw-away line or flailing physical gag, yet we keep being surprised that this mumbling wise-ass is actually wily enough to peel back the layers of plot. No matter the array of goofy disguises he dons – he’s Frank Abagnale-lite, with ad-hoc expertise in airplanes, SEC law, surgery… we get that, just beneath the obligatory Chase stuff, is an actual character who’s grown to care about the bums, gracing their mistreatment with his most righteously earnest scowl.
Kino Lorber’s new 2K release of the movie has a raft of repeated extras from previous outings, buoyed by a new commentary track by entertainment journalists/authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry, who dive into the ephemera of the film, from the usual cast and crew bios to anecdotal backstories on the making of the movie. Most interesting is the well-informed comparison of the movie to McDonald’s original character, which reveals the heavy layers of questionable legal maneuvers, dark personal cynicism, and outright misogyny that would have been de rigueur for any adaptation made in the ‘70s, but that had to be scrubbed out entirely to pretzel into the four-quadrant mentality of the ‘80s. With the prospect of, say, a 1976 Fletch, starring, maybe, Gene Hackman or Burt Reynolds in gritty, downbeat tones… it’s hard to know how much to actually love the version we got.
The images in this review are not representative of the actual Blu-ray’s image quality, and are included only to represent the film itself.