BEFORE: John Slattery carries over from "Eraser". Hey, it's a "Mad Men" reunion tonight, because Jon Hamm is in this movie, too. At some point I did binge-watch all the episodes of "Mad Men", only I did it years after everybody was talking about it. My ex-boss swore by it, but he worked tangentially to the advertising biz, so it probably hit harder for him, I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I watched the whole series in 2018 or so? I'm still trying to find time to watch all of "Lost", there's still some hope I may get to that before I die.
Here's the great news - I've been all over the place so far in this New Year, I started with a film from 2019, then 2013, 2002, 2012, forward to 2018, then TWO from 2022 (!!) then WAY back to 1996, forward to 2017, back to 1996 AGAIN, and now another new(ish) film from 2022. Tomorrow it's 2019, but then like THREE 2022's in a row! And I promise, there's a whole bunch of films from 2021 and 2022 coming this month, just be patient.
THE PLOT: After becoming the prime suspect in a murder, Fletch strives to prove his innocence while simultaneously searching for his girlfriend's stolen art collection.
AFTER: I was really interested in this when I saw it pop up in the cable listings a couple months ago, because damn, it's been how long since "Fletch Lives"? 1989? That's 11, plus 23, carry the one...34 YEARS since the last "Fletch" movie came out, with Chevy Chase in the lead role. That's a fricking long time, I wonder if that's a record for a sequel. Umm, reboot? Whatever, I'm glad somebody's reviving a franchise, but what took so damn long? I guess they had to wait for everybody to forget about "Fletch Lives"? Or the series is like ponytails for men, they're so far out of style that they're back in again? Well, that's what I keep telling people, anyway.
Somebody's been sitting on the movie rights to "Fletch" for ALL THAT TIME? Or maybe it was a few somebodys - but it reminds me a bit of all these restaurants that closed down during the pandemic, and remain closed. Really? The economy's better now, right, and nobody wants to open up a restaurant in that space? Somebody owns that building and they are LOSING money every day that space remains vacant. Similarly, somebody was failing to make money off the "Fletch" franchise every damn day for 34 years? I find this hard to believe, maybe there were a few attempts during that time to get something going, but they couldn't find the right director, they couldn't get funding, the studios did a focus group and found out nobody knew what a "Fletch" was? I don't know, but I'd love to hear the story.
Maybe they were waiting for somebody to come along with the same sort of humor, charm and arrogance as Chevy Chase had in the role. A B.S. artist, somebody who could investigate a crime and also talk his way out of every tight situation he got caught in - well, jeez, Jon Hamm can do that, right? It's right in his wheelhouse, not just as Don Draper but I'm thinking of him as his characters in "Bad Times at the El Royale", "Baby Driver", and "Keeping Up with the Joneses", they were all suave, debonair, arrogant and right on that fine edge between upright, uptight and downright evil. AND he always looks good doing that, and I say that as a straight guy. Hell, he even makes Progressive Insurance commercials watchable. So great job on the casting here, I think - if anybody's going to make this character relevant again, he's got a solid shot at it.
It's based on one of the Fletch novels, though, one that was written in 1976. So there's a chance this whole thing could feel outdated, but thankfully art heists and murders are evergreen, but then again, this story was written back when cel phones weren't even a thing. Here Fletch leaves his usual stomping grounds of L.A. and comes to Boston, home of art museums galore, to find twelve paintings that were possibly stolen by an art dealer. The paintings belong to the billionaire father of Fletch's Italian girlfriend, who he met several months ago while in Italy, spending time away from his ex-wives. Sure, I'll buy that.
But not long after hitting town, Fletch finds a dead woman in his rented town house, and despite being the one who calls the cops to report the murder, he's still considered the prime suspect. I can see the logic - if he WAS the murderer, you'd expect him to panic and try to dispose of the body. If he was NOT the murderer, he'd call the cops and remain calm. But a SMART murderer would do exactly what a non-murderer would do, call the cops and remain calm. So maybe this is why the Boston police detectives don't rule him out, they might just think he's smart.
Fletch then works the case from all angles, he meets with the art dealer suspected of stashing the paintings somewhere. He interviews friends and associates of the owner of the town house, trying to make a connection to the dead woman. Perhaps he thinks the two crimes will meet up, somewhere in the middle. He fends off advances from his girlfriend's stepmother, who arrives in Boston unexpectedly to ask him for updates about the paintings. To Fletch's credit, he does NOT sleep with his girlfriend's stepmother, so hey, the character's showing some personal growth, I think.
But always, always, using those fake names and cover stories when he meets new people - this could only go south if all of those people should, say, end up in the same room together and all think that Fletch is a different person. Also, Fletch meets up with his reporter friend on the staff of the Boston Sentinel, another convert who moved from L.A., and that's when we all get our delightful "Mad Men" reunion. I guess if they'd dropped Vincent Kartheiser or Elisabeth Moss in here, too that would all be just a bit too twee - no, just seeing Hamm and Slattery back together as frenemies is just fine, thanks.
This murder mystery probably can't hold a candle to "Glass Onion", from what I've heard, anyway, but I guess I'll find that out in about 10 days, when I can then play "compare and contrast". But there's a lot to like here, not just from Jon Hamm but also from Roy Wood Jr., probably the only correspondent from "The Daily Show" who really deserves to be in more movies. Somehow Ronny Chieng has a bigger career, and I think that's a real crime. Roy needs to get off the small screen and into more movies - the only ones on his IMDB list are this film and the one I'm going to watch tomorrow.
OH, YEAH, that reminds me, I never gave you my actor links for the month of January - geez, after figuring the month out, I went straight into it, without so much as a how-de-doo. So, after Roy Wood Jr. links to tomorrow's film, there's Sunita Mani, James Hong, Tantoo Cardinal, Martin Sensmeier, Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Arturo Castro, Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Sam Rockwell, William H. Macy, Dale Dickey (again) and Sean Penn, and then that gets me to "Licorice Pizza". Yep, that's 16 names for 21 films, but you can puzzle it out if you really want to. Or, you know, just wait.
The ending apparently sets up the next book in the series, which is "Fletch's Fortune", but after this film was under-promoted and thus underperformed last year (earned just a bit over $600,000), nobody's sure if another film in the series will be made. That's too bad, there was nothing really wrong with this one, I hope they make another sequel, and I hope they do it before 2057. That's entirely too long to wait.
Also starring Jon Hamm (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Roy Wood Jr., Ayden Mayeri (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Lorenza Izzo (last seen in "Knock Knock"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Tesla"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), John Behlmann, Lucy Punch (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Erica McDermott (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Eugene Mirman (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Kenneth Kimmins (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Robert Picardo (last seen in "Matinee"), Eli Neslund, Caitlin Zerra Rose, Domenico Del Giacco, Aaron Andrade, Travis Bennett, Nhumi Threadgill, Anna Osceola, Gene Amoroso (last seen in "The Company Men"), D-Tension, Elizabeth Goodfellow.
RATING: 6 out of 10 named fish in the tank
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