BEFORE: I forgot this film was also written by Neil Simon - similar perhaps to his spoof of mysteries, "Murder By Death", which was released two years before this one, with many of the same actors. Yep, I ran out of Richard Dreyfuss films, so Marsha Mason carries over - I've certainly developed a workable pattern, now, haven't I?
I passed on the two other Marsha Mason films that TCM ran during the Neil Simon tribute, which were "Chapter Two" and "Only When I Laugh". Hey, my DVR only holds so many movies at one time. Did I make the right call? I don't know, but if I come up two movies short in my chain this year, I'll look back on this and know what I could have done to make everything line up perfectly.
THE PLOT: San Francisco, 1940, detectives, dames, documents, Nazis, and a treasure.
AFTER: Well, there was a Bogart reference in "The Goodbye Girl", so Neil Simon was clearly a fan, and this pastiche rips off and riffs on most of the classic tropes that filled up Bogart's films - playing as both/either an homage to the private eye genre, or a parody thereof. Obviously this isn't meant to be taken seriously at all, not with such outrageous characters and a pieced-together plot - the tone ends up somewhere between "Airplane" and a Mel Brooks film like "Young Frankenstein" or "Blazing Saddles", none of which are meant to be taken seriously, either. "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" did a parody of this whole detective genre too, a few years after this.
Most notably, "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca" are referenced - why else would the French resistance and a few notable Nazis be in San Francisco? Why are large men with funny accents trying to track down a lost "valuable" treasure? And why is every sultry woman in Lou Peckinpaugh's life coming on to him at the exact same time? This leads to the film's best gag, when he's got his ex-lover, his current lover and his mystery client stashed in different rooms, and he's got to get rid of them, one by one, without their paths crossing.
This is also a murder mystery, but it hardly matters who the killer is - not when there are so many twists and turns along the way. Not when a last-minute phone call from a new client can send our hero off into a different direction - so the plot ambles a bit, that's fine. You don't expect "Airplane" to make a lot of coherent sense, do you? And at least there wasn't a cop-out ending like in "Blazing Saddles".
You've got to watch this one very closely, though - not all of the gags are blatant, some are as simple as watching someone open a drawer to get an already poured shot or mixed drink. You can miss a lot if you're not paying close attention.
Also starring Peter Falk (last seen in "Robin and the 7 Hoods"), Madeline Kahn (last seen in "Nixon"), Ann-Margret, Eileen Brennan (last seen in "Private Benjamin"), Sid Caesar (last seen in "Airport 1975"), Louise Fletcher (last seen in "Mulholland Falls"), Dom DeLuise (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit II"), James Coco (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), John Houseman (last seen in "Another Woman"), Fernando Lamas, Vic Tayback (last seen in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"), Abe Vigoda, Nicol Williamson (also carrying over from "The Goodbye Girl"), David Ogden Stiers (last seen in "Doc Hollywood"), with cameos from James Cromwell (last seen in "The Queen"), Scatman Crothers (last heard in "The Aristocats"), Phil Silvers, Jonathan Banks (last seen in "Coming Home"), Paul Williams (last seen in "The Chase")
RATING: 5 out of 10 pages of anagrammed names
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