Lack of good storyline.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Better Late Then Never

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

Fletch attempts to do for Chevy Chase what Beverly Hills Cop did for Eddie Murphy: turn the comedian into a wisecracking, street-wise hero who is always one step ahead of the bad guys.It doesn't work.Chase gives it his best shot, but the part simply isn't right for him: he's much more suited to playing the lovable, well-meaning fool, as seen in the Vacation movies, Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos!. Of course, it doesn't help either that the script is so short on genuine laughs and decent action, the several scenes involving Fletch sporting a variety of crazy guises providing only moderate giggles, the excitement limited to one unimpressive car chase and some brief gun action.The Beverly Hills Cop connection goes so far as to having Harold Faltermeyer providing the score, but his music for Fletch is nowhere near as good as Axel F, being extremely monotonous and incredibly intrusive (the same few notes repeated again and again and again, no matter what the situation).5.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 6 for the lovely Geena Davis, who has a supporting role as Fletch's loyal newsroom assistant Larry (huh?!?!).

Watched this last weekend at home with family, where Chevy Chase plays an investigative journalist with a passion for clever disguises.We see Fletch going from place to place making up interesting characters with a great presence of mind to turn every situation into his favour and solving the mystery. The car chase, the hospital scenes as a kidney pain patient and subsequently as a doctor were absolutely hilarious.Chevy acts with absolute ease and is completely into this role keeping the audience laughing from beginning to end. Michael Ritchie is a good director supported by good screenplay from Andrew Bergman.

You had to be there. No, that is not a figure of speech. You literally had to be there. Before computers and cable. In the age of print. In the age of books. Greg McDonald popped out nowhere with his Fletch series and it caught on like wildfire. Fletch was an investigative reporter, and the books were marketed as mysteries. But there were a lot of mysteries back then. So, you ask (er ... you WOULD ask if you were paying attention) what was there about the Fletch series that made it a runaway bestseller back in the days when mysteries were a dime a dozen and dinosaurs walked the earth? The answer is not the character, not the mystery itself, and not the rich background detail (because there was none). It was the writing. Sparse. Bare. So tight your backteeth ached when you read it. On the cover of the Fletch pocket books -- yes, they sold them in bookstores and drugstores -- the publisher actually reproduced a few sample lines of text from the book simply to "show off" the powerful, simple, prose. As this is written, I don't know how many AMLIT classes around the US have McDonald on the curriculum but I can opine that they all should. His writing was THAT unique. Now the film. Imagine how the Hollywood screenwriter felt when handed this project? Apoplexy comes to mind. So, fearful of losing the gig, he did what every Hollywood screenwriter does when he doesn't understand the material he has ... he turned it into a comedy. Chase was cast and he was just superb ... but superb in a role that never existed in the book! (And less superb in the sequel because by then the novelty was wearing off). It showcases the power of movies in our culture that, to this day, millions of Chase fans think that the Fletch series was actually written that way. Factoid -- one of the oddest, and possibly scariest, things about the film is the scene where Chase puts on the "disguise" of the old man. Because, if you compare the makeup with the way he actually looked some 30 years later -- as in Google Images -- you will find a perfect match.

Chevy Chase makes the most of what is one of his best ever roles, in this adaptation of the comedy / mystery novel by Gregory McDonald, scripted by Andrew Bergman. Irwin Maurice "Fletch" Fletcher is a hot shot investigative reporter whose curiosity is aroused when smooth rich man Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson) approaches him with a proposition: murder Stanwyk for a nice five figure sum. Stanwyk claims to be already dying of bone cancer, but Fletch rightly senses something suspicious and snoops around, despite the fact that he was supposed to be working on an expose of the drug traffic at a beach. There is a certain kinship between "Fletch" and "Beverly Hills Cop" in that they feature unflappable main characters who often manufacture scams in order to get what they need from other characters; in Fletch's case, he takes it a step further and dons various disguises as well. You have to hand it to Fletch - this is a guy who rarely loses his cool, even when guns are being pointed at him. Chase knows this is a fun role and is clearly just having a blast, firing off wise ass one liners left and right. As a result, the dialogue is often quite funny and the movie does have a certain energy to it, moving along quite nicely. The supporting cast is great, including Joe Don Baker as the police chief, the lovely and appealing Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as the leading lady (she easily could have had an even better career in film), Richard Libertini as Fletch's long suffering editor, M. Emmet Walsh as a cheerful doctor, George Wendt as beach bum / drug pusher Fat Sam, Kenneth Mars as Stanton Boyd, Geena Davis in a perky early career film appearance as Fletch's co-worker Larry (!), and William Traylor as the unfortunate Mr. Underhill, with a bunch of familiar faces in small parts: George Wyner, Tony Longo, James Avery, Burton Gilliam, William Sanderson, Bill Henderson, Beau Starr, and Ralph Seymour; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's cameo role as himself is actually quite fleeting. Comic highlights include Fletch's visit to Dr. Dolan (Walsh), wherein he gets a rectal exam, the mystery element of the movie works pretty well, and there's some good action to boot, with an impressive climactic car chase. The aliases are hysterical, as Fletch will refer to himself as Ted Nugent, John Cocktoastin, and Arnold Babar, among other names. For fans of Chase and director Michael Ritchie ("Downhill Racer", "The Bad News Bears", "The Golden Child"), this rollicking movie really does deliver the goods, maintaining interest for a solidly entertaining 99 minutes. Rent or buy this movie and be prepared for some hearty laughs.And feel free to go ahead and charge it to the Underhills.Eight out of 10.