A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Blistering performances.

Lighthearted suspense film about a phony psychic/con artist and her taxi driver/private investigator boyfriend who encounter a pair of serial kidnappers while trailing a missing heir in California.When you think of Hitchcock's best films, you think "Vertigo", "Psycho" and "Rear Window", to name a few. You very rarely hear "Family Plot" mentioned, but I would argue it is among his best and a fine way to retire.The humor is nice, especially with the wonderful Bruce Dern. But really, this is just pure mystery and suspense. Is the missing child alive? If yes, who is he? And who is chasing who? This is such a great mystery film it deserves a second or third viewing.

And now for something completely...different? Although he probably didn't think this would be his last film, Hitchcock certainly picked an interesting project to go out on. FAMILY PLOT is about two criminal couples who paths happen to cross in a surprising way. Perhaps more than any film in his corpus (that I've seen so far), FAMILY PLOT has a lighthearted tone while maintaining that edge that Hitchcock was so well-known for. The plot is a bit convoluted, as is to be expected, but the way in which it all comes together at the end was something to behold. I may have criticized his earlier films for their endings, but he seems to have come up with the perfect one here. Not to mention, the final sequence was as suspenseful as anything he did in his prime. Here, he collaborated again with writer Ernest Lehman, who he worked with on NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Perhaps that's why the films feel so similar, at least tonally. There's also a hilarious car chase sequence which fares much better than Cary Grant's in NXNW, although the process shots/rear projection was just as noticeable. However, he worked with a new composer this time: a pre-Star Wars/Superman John Williams. While I wouldn't count this as one of his best, or most memorable, scores, it certainly fit the quirky tone of the film. If I had to describe it, the score (and the film) is somewhere between Monty Python and Matlock, if that makes any sense. As with his last couple pictures, this one doesn't really have any star power behind it, although I did recognize Bruce Dern from his small role in MARNIE. They all give decent if unspectacular performances, and their characters were reasonably developed. Of course, I loved all of the Hitchcockian touches in the camera-work and editing. Despite being advanced in age, he still could put together a great set-piece. Overall, this isn't top-tier Hitchcock, but it certainly made for an entertaining and satisfying swansong to an incredible career.

. . . and his character, George Lumley, proves more durable than the drunken sailor he played in MARNIE. I thought it was TOTALLY an implausible plot point that jewel thieves would hold a poor church mouse for ransom when I viewed FAMILY PLOT, until I saw this week's headline about the "Bishop of Bling" over in Germany. That does not change the fact that when you see the highlight reel of the fourteen Hitchcock flicks offered for sale in Universal Studio's "Master of Suspense" collection, the scenes from FAMILY PLOT sort of stick out like sore thumbs (and that includes the sticking of the aforementioned bishop with a hypodermic needle during his mid-Mass kidnapping; common sense would suggest NO congregation anywhere would sit still for such an incident, but as this week's offering at the multiplex--JACKASS PRESENTS BAD GRANDPA--proves, the American public has little if any common sense, and pranksters or evil-doers can get away with pretty much ANYTHING in front of a crowd as long as they seem either self-assured and\or too much trouble to interfere with).

When people state it's a good Hitchcokian film, I tend to believe it really is. However, it is not the case in here. I may admit the plot seems very interesting and original, from the get go, but the outcome just doesn't deliver. You know, for a plot two hours long, spectator REQUIRES some surprising twist or something, but in this case, filmmakers end this with no big events or anything. One of the some good scenes is when Blanche and Tyler go down on the road-- it's pretty agonizing, be careful. Other than that, there are good actors that truly engage the story, but that isn't enough to fill out the seek for a complete story we all expect. Maybe that's why it's one of the most infamous Hitchcockian's movie.