Confess, Fletch (2022)

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Jon Hamm, Marcia Gay Harden, Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr.

Have I Seen it Before: No, but I’ve read a number of the Fletch books, including listening the the audiobook of this one quite recently.

Did I Like It: Which I think goes straight to my big problem with the film, even if it is a minor one. It’s only been a few weeks since I took the story in, and I had long since forgotten who did it. While I like the character of Fletch, and the journey of through these stories are always pleasurable enough, the mysteries themselves aren’t anywhere near as engaging.

All things considered, that’s probably a pretty good mark against an adaptation: For better or worse, it has harnessed the spirit of its source material, flaws and all. Thankfully, while I felt a little disconnected with the mystery that fuels the comedy, I can say that the usual steadfast rule that the most famous person in the cast is usually the one who did it didn’t hold up here. There were two people of relative equal fame who weren’t playing one Irwin Maurice Fletcher, and only one of them did, in fact, do it. Knives Out (2019) probably made more hay out of avoiding that cliche, but that is more a question of budget than intent.

The other problem I’ve had as I’ve read the Gregory Mcdonald books is that it has been absolutely impossible to reconcile the character within those pages with the fundamentally smart-aleck, and occasionally needlessly absurdist starring vehicle tailored for Chevy Chase in the 80s. Hamm, however, feels perfectly at home in the role. There is almost nothing zany about his work in the role. So, for someone who has been itching to have Fletch return to the screen, this is about as welcome a return as a man could hope for.

Paul (2011)

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman

Have I Seen It Before?: Certainly.

Did I like it?: It feels fundamentally unfair, but when Pegg and Frost headline a film, one can’t help but long for Edgar Wright to be at the helm of the film. They should be allowed to work on their own projects, right?

Also, I can’t help but feel that as Simon Pegg becomes more and more successful with mainstream audiences that his nerd credibility has also become diminished.

But to judge the film on its actual merits, and not some artificial sense of its context among other films…

To its credit, the special effects are pretty subtly great. Nearly ten years after the release, Paul (voiced by Rogen) remains a fairly believable CGI creature. That’s no small feat. Greg Mottola is fine as director, and the whole film works as an innocuous comedy. And yet, the whole film never quite launches past the orbit of other American films of the last fifteen years or so (call it the Apatow era, if that helps). It also trucks in dread “reference rumor,” that same style of writing that fueled “The Big Bang Theory” through 912 seasons. Here it is supposed to be enough that much of the film takes place at Sand Diego ComicCon, but the context of why we appreciate the things celebrated there isn’t quite there. Somebody like Edgar Wright would have made one of the best close encounter movies of all time, and it would be thoroughly amusing as something of an afterthought.

I guess I did manage to find a way to bring the specter of Edgar Wright back into this review. I guess I’m still irate that he was chased off of Ant-Man (2015) is all.

But, again, that doesn’t really talk about this film, does it? The script came from Simon Pegg (and Frost), who wrote those superlative Cornetto films, you’d think something would leak in, but it again, remains just a comedy. Had Pegg and Frost not been in the film at all, I probably wouldn’t be thinking along these lines at all.