Director: Jonathan Lynn
Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd
Have I Seen it Before: Yes…
Did I Like It: How do you broach the subject of writing about a nearly universally loved film, when you don’t like it even a little bit?
Don’t go, don’t go. We can talk about it, right?
I like the cast. Some of them have appeared in some of my very favorite films of all time. Christopher Lloyd, who I adore, sleepwalks through the film, in sharp contrast to Tim Curry who is probably too frantic here for his own good. The late, great Madeline Kahn can’t help but shine, with her “flames” speech being my biggest laugh during the film.
Yes, I didn’t laugh much during the film, and if you’re not laughing while watching a comedy, that’s pretty much the beginning and end of it. There’s some wordplay, which I’m always in favor of, but the dialogue is spit out with an almost sleepy indifference (Kahn notwithstanding).
But the problems for me go deeper than the fact that I didn’t think the film is all that funny, and it goes to the core gimmick that has cemented the film in most peoples memories, the multiple endings. While it would have been an intriguing prospect to see the film multiple times and having a different experience in the theater, but after it moves into home media, we are subjected to all three endings in quick succession*, which makes the true messiness at the core of the movie hard to ignore. How can a mystery work if it truly, deeply, doesn’t matter who was the murderer/murderers? Communism may be a red herring, but in this Schrödinger’s mystery, everything is a red herring. Hardly seems worth it.
Also, what the hell does Cluedo mean? Why do people call it that outside of the country?
* DVDs and Blu-Rays give the viewer the option to view only one ending at random, but that hardly seems like the same thing.