Retch
Just an absurd review of the Fletch DVD in Slate. Review is too nice a word, since Reihan Salam can barely be bothered to discuss the film--instead, it's all about Fletch's alleged politics.
I remember Fletch as a mildly amusing comedy that captured Chevy Chase's wisecrack style a bit better than most of his (generally forgettable) work. But Salam's main concern is the movie, rather than taking the correct side in class warfare, is trafficking in dreaded "right-wing populism." Weighing down a film like this with such political baggage (and even then getting the politics wrong!) is really missing the point.
What's Salam's prescription? Someone give Fletch a copy of What's the Matter With Kansas? Unless your table is uneven, no one needs a copy of this book, which starts with false facts and then does poor analysis to come to its left-wing populist conclusions. I think a better idea is for people who own this book to get a copy of Fletch.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:54 AM
2 Comments:
First reaction: The review in Slate is an amazing use of technology. When you review a book, you include quotations from it. Now, when reviewing a movie, you can include actual clips!
I really like the movie. Yes, it's very 1980s, but so are all the John Hughes movies, and most of them are excellent.
Certainly the reviewer is correct that Fletch's humor comes primarily from the character's constant mocking of almost everyone he meets. Chevy Chase does this perfectly: it creates the illusion that absolutely everyone in the scene, except for Fletch and the viewer, are idiots.
And the reviewer is right that this humor is sometimes at the expense of rednecks, Mormons, sheriffs with southern accents, and other common liberal foils. Even if this was the complete list of those he mocks, that wouldn't make it a bad movie. (It would put Fletch in the same category as All In the Family, which is brilliantly funny despite wearing its politics on its sleeve.)
But the review in Slate is wrong because it deliberately omits a lot of evidence. When Fletch mocks working-class Mexicans, it's less clear that this can be described as "liberalism", but there are some forms of liberalism that do have a closeted scorn for the uneducated of any race. But what about Fletch's ex-wife's lawyer? He is clearly meant to be a stereotype of a nerdy Jewish big-city lawyer (played by George Wyner of Hill Street Blues fame). And the scene where Fletch enters the hospital and looks at the directory, and every doctor in the building is named "Rosen[something]"? One can debate whether it's good or bad to mock Jewish lawyers and doctors, but that's not what most people call "liberal scoffing at Reagan's America".
Finally, you'd think a serious review would mention that this movie was based on a best-selling book which is part of a popular book series.
Fletch was one of my favourite films of the 80s it seems for the same reason the unknown reviewer in Slate hated it- it was an equal opportunity slam at pretty much everyone by a character with an amusing contempt for humaity in general (and contrary to the column's claims, Fletch is just as hard on the beach junkies as anyone else). The reviewer seems to want humour (in silly just about B movies) to advance an agenda.
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