(1985) In a feature-length film, both comedy and sex need a decent story to avoid becoming little more than obscene. In director Michael Ritchie's picture, the story is based on Gregory McDonald's best-selling thriller.

In disguise on the beach, looking for the source behind a drug-trafficking ring, Irwin M. Fletch (Chevy Chase), a chameleon LA newspaper reporter who writes a column under the pseudonym Jane Doe, encounters a businessman, Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson), who offers him $1000 to listen to his proposition at his home. Fletch, in a Dodgers baseball cap and LA Lakers t-shirt saying his name's Ted Nugent, comments on the Beverly Hills mansion as having once belonged to Hopalong Cassidy where the actor committed suicide with bow and arrow.

Assuming his mark is a junkie, Stanwyk says: "I want you to murder me." Next Thursday, using Stanwyk's .357 Magnum in a drawer, with $50,000 waiting in an open safe and ticket to Rio, because he's dying of bone cancer: unlike suicide, murder won't nullify his company's hefty life-insurance policy. Fletch agrees to perform the deed, then begins an investigation into Stanwyk's background with the help of Larry (Geena Davis) at the newspaper.

Executive VP for Boyd Aviation, Stanwyk is married to the owner's daughter Gail. Caught trying to sneak into his own apartment, Fetch gives up the grand as alimony to his ex-wife. As Arnold Babar, Fletch visits Stanwyk's physician and obtains his medical records while posing as a doctor. As John Cocktoastin, he schmoozes with Gail on the country club tennis court, charging everything to a rude member. As Mr Poon with the SEC he interviews Stanton Boyd. After learning that Gail has converted $3 million worth of stock into cash to purchase a ranch in Utah, Fletch hops a flight to Provo and at night slips into real-estate agent Jim Swarthout's office, taking snapshots of the property documents and escaping from a Doberman pinscher's fangs.

Nagged by his editor to finish the drug exposé, Fletch, who's so cool he sometimes wears a seersucker suit, tells Frank that he needs a little more time to connect the corrupt police department with the small fry, Gummy and Fat Sam; soon after he's arrested for possession of heroin and brought before homicidal police chief Jerry Karlin (Joe Don Baker).

As Gordon Liddy with false teeth, pretending to be an aircraft mechanic, he's told that Stanwyk's personal jet has been consuming enough fuel to fly to South America on weekly jaunts to Utah. Pulling everything together, he reveals what he knows to Gail about her "bad guy" husband before departing out the back window, wearing one of Alan's suits, with an angry member of the country club banging on the front of the cabana. There's more to come: a wild car chase, the discovery of another wife (which is bigamy "even in Utah"), and the Thursday evening appointment at Stanwyk's mansion.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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