BEFORE: The last Clint Eastwood film on my list (for now, at least), Clint making his 18th appearance in the countdown tonight, and I didn't even watch all of the Dirty Harry films, or those two films he made with that orangutan (look it up, kids, that really happened). True, today was Marilyn Monroe's birthday, and I could have watched "The Seven Year Itch", but I'm trying to maintain a larger plan. Plus the title drew me in, since it's been hot as blazes in NY the last 2 days. As usual, there was only about 2 weeks of nice temperatures between sweater weather and, um, sweaty weather.
THE PLOT: A slick private eye and tough police lieutenant--former partners--reluctantly team up to investigate a murder.
AFTER: Well, that was ill-advised. Probably should have gone with the Marilyn flick.
Nostalgia is a tricky animal - I've found that in most cases, romanticizing events of 20 to 25 years ago works best. Look at the way "Happy Days" kept the 1950's alive in the 1970's, or "That 70's Show" worked in the late 1990's. Go back any further than 25 years, and you risk a dis-connect. (There is the rare exception, like "Taking Woodstock" - but that rode a very fine line between comedy and parody) Why did "The Green Hornet" do so poorly last year? Because the storyline came from the 1950's, I think. "Alvin and the Chipmunks" might have been reaching too far back - but the makers of "Miami Vice" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" were on the right track.
So the attempt to bring back 1930's-era detective stories with this film in 1984 seems really ill-advised. Unless you're going to do a flat-out "Airplane"-style parody of a 1930's gumshoe story, like in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", it's best not to just go half-way with the comedy.
This became a downward spiral for me - some slapstick fights and a few jokes that didn't land, and suddenly I wasn't so interested in the story. Which meant that my attention wavered, and my eyes closed. Then I had to rewind and catch what I missed, but by then the damage was done.
Part of this obsessive film-watching process has made me realize that I don't actually care for noir-style detective fiction. Whodunnit? Who cares? Everyone from that decade is dead and gone anyway. "The Maltese Falcon" was way over-rated, and "The Big Sleep" was more like "The Big Snooze". Let's face it, once "Charlie's Angels" and "Magnum P.I." came along, detective fiction was changed forever (speaking of nostalgia...). And then "Law & Order" and "CSI" came along and changed it again, so there's no going back to the era of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer.
I've reviewed the plot on-line, and read the reviews where other people found the film confusing - so the judges have allowed me to move on.
I will credit the film, however, for allowing me to finally get the sexual subtext of the "Red Riding Hood" story. (Hint: it's not only the wolf's eyes, nose and teeth that are big.)
Also starring Burt Reynolds (last seen in "The Dukes of Hazzard"), Madeline Kahn (last seen in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother"), Jane Alexander (last seen in "Kramer vs. Kramer"), Irene Cara (last seen in "Fame"), Rip Torn (last seen in "The Insider"), Richard Roundtree (last seen in "Earthquake").
RATING: 2 out of 10 bottles of "furniture polish"
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