Confess, Fletch

Jon Hamm takes over from Chevy Chase in a reboot of the lightweight crime franchise about an exasperatingly smug undercover reporter.

Jon Hamm goes undercover in a blazer

Quick question: is Jon Hamm funny? Does Jon Hamm think he’s funny? He’s certainly not Chevy Chase. Back in 1985, Chevy Chase played Irwin Maurice ‘Fletch’ Fletcher, an undercover reporter with a smart mouth and a knack for circuitously solving cases. Created by the mystery novelist Gregory Mcdonald, Fletch became a household name in the 1980s and the first, eponymous comedy was a critical and commercial success. A sequel followed four years later (Fletch Lives) and proved to be a disappointment with reviewers, with only Chevy Chase himself surviving relatively unscathed. And now we have the belated reboot which is about as somnambulant as the first one was fast-paced.

Here Fletch is portrayed as a know-it-all reporter with a knack for slipping in and out of tight places, who is irresistible to women (“I am adorable,” he concedes) and whose sarcasm is honed to a stiletto point. And we know what they say about sarcasm. The film exudes an air of laid-back languor, which is presumably meant to be effortless cool, but it is actually insipid and dull. This is one of those dated capers in which everybody our protagonist meets is an eccentric, and so we are encouraged to chuckle along with our hero’s martini-dry reaction shots. One eccentric may be droll, but when everybody is an oddball, the joke rather loses its novelty. There’s the neighbour (Annie Mumolo) with the questionable hygiene who is an accidental pyromaniac (just the one stove fire would have sufficed), there’s the accident-prone cop (Ayden Mayeri) and then her narcoleptic superior (Roy Wood Jr) who, much like the movie, spends much of the time half asleep. And don’t get me started on Kyle MacLachlan’s obsessive-compulsive art dealer who comes armed with an infrared fingerprint detector. Ho-ho.

When Fletch hooks up with the daughter (Lorenza Izzo) of a kidnapped art collector in Rome, a perfunctory romance develops with all the chemistry of flat Peroni. And so Fletch proceeds to Boston to pick up the trail, where he immediately becomes the prime suspect for a murder that he meticulously reported to the police, with helpful clues. As if. None of this rings true, and so, with a mounting sense of despair, we are left waiting for the next eccentric suspect to appear. Obviously the film thinks it’s clever, but it’s a conceit unlikely to be shared by even the most devoted whodunit aficionado.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr, Ayden Mayeri, Annie Mumolo, Lorenza Izzo, John Slattery, Kenneth Kimmins, John Behlmann, Lucy Punch, Robert Picardo, Kyle MacLachlan, Marcia Gay Harden. 

Dir Greg Mottola, Pro Bill Block, Connie Tavel and Jon Hamm, Screenplay Zev Borow and Greg Mottola, Ph Sam Levy, Pro Des Alex DiGerlando, Ed Andy Keir, Music David Arnold, Costumes Wendy Chuck. 

Miramax-Paramount Pictures.
98 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 16 September 2022. UK Rel: 18 November 2022. Cert. 15.