Viking Night: Fletch
By Bruce Hall
January 12, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Chase was a founding cast member of Saturday Night Live, and the original host of Weekend Update. He made his name on the show by insulting the president, doing a lot of coke, and acting like a taller, considerably more acerbic David Spade when David Spade was still in elementary school. All in all, Chase helped set the tone for what has since become an American institution. Chase left after one year, believing he was more important than God, who allowed him to believe this until around 1993.
But before the bottom fell out, Chase had a pretty good run, cranking out a string of classics like Caddyshack, Vacation, Fletch and Three Amigos. Most have aged well, but the one I want to talk about today is Fletch, since that’s the one I haven’t seen in the longest. Chase was at the height of his career and watching him perform, it’s hard to imagine him as the turgid loaf he’s since become. It's a clever, consistently funny adaptation of a 1974 novel by Gregory McDonald, which you don't have to feel bad about not having read, because neither have I.
Lucky for us, it's a simple story.
Irwin Fletcher (Chase) is an investigative reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, writing under the nom de plume Jane Doe. He does a lot of undercover work, which lends itself well to his universally disdainful attitude. He is fond of outrageous disguises, criminal trespass, and aliases vaguely reminiscent of unmentionable body parts. Lately, he’s been posing as an unusually clean shaven junkie investigating a sudden influx of hard drugs on the Los Angeles beach scene. So far he’s got no leads, save for a hot dog vendor named Fat Sam (George Wendt) and a scummy drifter named Gummy (Larry "Flash" Jenkins). Fat Sam is peddling the drugs on the beach, but nobody can figure out where he gets his stash. Fletch is on the hunt for the source.
This is when he’s approached by a man in an expensive suit who seems to be hanging around under the boardwalk, looking for junkies to approach with an unusual proposal. Wealthy industrialist Alan Stanwyck (Tim Matheson) claims to be dying of bone cancer, and wishes to die before succumbing to the disease. But if he commits suicide his insurance won’t pay out - so he needs Fletch to kill him. An arrangement is made whereby Fletch will enter Stanwyck’s home on a predetermined date, shoot him, and make off free and clear with a shiny new Jaguar, $50,000 in cash, and a one way ticket to Rio.
No muss, no fuss.
Years of hard hitting street journalism suggest to Fletch that this is too good to be true, so he starts looking into Stanwyck, to the irritation of his editor (Richard Libertini), who is expecting an article on the beach drugs. As he digs deeper, Fletch discovers that Stanwyck may not be the fine, upstanding citizen he appears to be and even worse, there’s something fishy going on with the LAPD down at the waterfront. The cops aren’t happy about the beach investigation, and Stanwyck has some powerful friends who don’t seem to like reporters very much. Now Fletch is facing a dead end on the drug case, an army of murder happy cops, and an 11 a.m. deadline from his editor.
Boy, wouldn’t it be lucky if both investigations turned out to be related somehow!
A peculiar aspect of Fletch as a character is that as a reporter with a date to meet, he seems unconcerned that he’s juggling two seemingly unrelated investigations and running into dead ends on both of them. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. I imagine Chase was cast for this role because of his openly conceited nature. And while I can’t say that Chase is much of an actor, he IS particularly gifted at being himself on camera. David Spade is not really that guy you see in his movies, but Chase is, and it serves him well here. But Fletch himself seems rather nonplussed by having set conflicting goals for himself, one of which may cost him his life, the other his job.
It’s not a big deal, but it’s the kind of thing you think about 30 minutes after the movie ends. For example, when we finally tie everything together and establish a clear antagonist, we never really settle on motive. Yes, there are bad people doing bad things, and Fletch is taking them all on with no allies other than a cub reporter named Larry (Geena Davis), Stanwyck’s bewildered wife (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), and a suitcase full of wigs and false teeth. But after Fletch ultimately uncovers the vast, Machiavellian scheme arrayed against him, it’s not entirely satisfying because there’s never any clear reason WHY any of this is going on.
It’s almost as though certain powerful people decided to put their lives and careers on the line for no particular reason other than to give Chevy Chase an excuse to walk around smirking, rolling his eyes and insulting people for 98 minutes. I get the idea that for Chase, this was less an acting gig than it was an exercise in self entitlement - one that would ruin most other films but here, it’s an approach that’s essential to the role. It’s a funny movie, and Chase is unquestionably in his (narrow) element. But from a storytelling perspective, it’s all a little confusing.
But really, that’s okay. Fletch is a competent (if overly complex) mystery, and it’s lots of fun watching Chase weasel his way into and out of one tight spot after another, whether it be jail, a car chase, or Gail Stanwyck. Time hasn’t dulled a witty script, full of clever wordplay and suggestive innuendo. Harold Faltermyer’s score - reminiscent of his work on Beverly Hills Cop - is a little dated, but somehow combines the annoying sparkle of '80s synth pop with the moody, almost noirish atmosphere you want out for a good thriller.
Fletch holds up better than it should, and it’s actually fascinating to watch someone solve a mystery using microfilm instead of the Internet, pay phones instead of Skype, and getting on a plane to chase down a lead instead of having Justin Long hack into a computer on the other side of the planet. And OMG, people could smoke on camera and Geena Davis looks like she’s a teenager! Was the world really like this once? Fletch serves as an entertaining window into an era gone by, not just from a comedic standpoint, but also in the sense that one wonders how things might have been different had a once great comedy icon stuck to his bread and butter. Why did he zig instead of zag? Your guess is as good as mine.
After all, he’s Chevy Chase, and you’re not.