Investigative journalist Irwin M. Fletcher (Chevy Chase) is working undercover one day when he is approached by millionaire industrialist Alan Stanwyck (Tim Matheson). Stanwyck, who has mistaken Fletch for a junkie, offers him a deal: If Fletch murders him, thereby allowing Stanwyck’s family to collect on his hefty life insurance policy, Stanwyck, who claims to be dying of bone cancer, will pay Fletch fifty grand.

Fletch agrees, but he’s no dummy, so he immediately becomes suspicious. A little digging reveals Stanwyck doesn’t have cancer, and a little more digging reveals that Stanwyck’s wife Gail (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is actually the source of his wealth. Employing a series of disguises, the wisecracking Fletch follows Stanwyck’s trail, uncovers a conspiracy, and almost loses his neck.

CRITIQUE

It’s a rare occasion when an actor is both a movie’s saving grace and its source of ruin, but that’s the case with Fletch. Twenty-five or so years ago, if you were casting a movie in which the main character is a wiseass with an aversion to authority, you couldn’t do much better than Chevy Chase. (That’s likely the last time you’ll ever run across the phrase “you couldn’t do much better than Chevy Chase,” but I digress.)

Chase was put on this Earth to do two things: one, play this sort or character; two, destroy his career. Problem here is, Fletch, a somewhat loose adaptation of the first in Gregory McDonald’s long-running series of novels, is also a mystery; it doesn’t just want to be a mystery, it actually is one. But the mystery aspects, which are actually quite interesting, are unfortunately given short shrift. Rather than finding the right balance, Fletch is eighty percent Chase goofing off, twenty percent Fletch trying to figure out exactly what is going on. And as funny as much of that goofing off can be, there always comes a point in this movie where I’ve simply had enough.

This movie has become something of a cult favorite over the years, and there’s one simple explanation for this: the dialogue. Fletch contains a snappy comeback or witty rejoined for virtually every situation. There’s so much quotable dialogue in this movie it’s ridiculous. And while screenwriter Andrew Bergman deserves credit for at least some of this, Chase undoubtedly improvised a great deal of it.

By the time the car chase (a completely unnecessary scene if I ever saw one) rolls around, I always to get a little tired of Fletch’s constant wisecracks. I keep hoping he’ll just shut the hell up and get back to digging into Stanwyck’s shenanigans. I’m all for constant jokes, one-liners, and silliness in something along the lines of, say, Caddyshack (a signature ‘80s comedy that actually deserves its status a classic), but in a comedy that actually goes out of its way to set up a story, I’d like to see that story play out in a reasonably believable way.

Movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run may not be completely plausible, but they do manage to balance their comedy and action/thriller/suspense elements in an admirable manner. Fletch, unfortunately, doesn’t.        

In addition to the scant screen time it’s given, there’s another problem with the plot’s mystery angle. Fletch is something of a master of disguise, donning whatever goofy garb or silly getup is required to get the job done. But that’s pretty much the only effort he puts into it. He never really does any real detective work, but instead just stands around while other characters--most of them portrayed as dumb rubes or yokels who don’t understand how they’re being conned by the hip, ironically detached Fletch--simply open their mouths and tell him everything he needs to know.

There are only a couple of scenes here in which Fletch actually does any extrapolating on his own; the rest of the time someone is spelling it all out for him. Who knows, perhaps the sight of novelty teeth or the sound of phony names can actually cause certain people to shut off what little brains they have and come down a case of diarrhea of the mouth; it’s possible, but I doubt it.

As you may already know, Chase and director Michael Ritchie reteamed four years after this movie’s release for a sequel, Fletch Lives. Anyone with a pulse could see that it was nothing more than a paycheck movie--one look at the trailer and you could tell Chase didn’t give a damn. I bring it up not only to warn you away from it, but also because it would have been nice had Universal included a copy of it in this release. I’ve always wanted to watch a copy of it burn, but I’ve never wanted to pay for one first.

THE VIDEO

In what will surely come to a surprise to no one, the 1.85:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1 onto a 25GB disc--is decidedly average. Like many a movie of its age, Fletch is soft and flat, with slightly washed-out colors and middling detail. A couple of sequences do look quite good--the first scene at the country club, the aforementioned car chase--but overall it’s exactly what you’d expect from a midrange ‘80s flick.

THE AUDIO

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, which is a 5.1 track in name only, is even more underwhelming. Dialogue fidelity is uneven, effects sound canned, and there’s no surround action whatsoever; the low end only comes into play in the music.

And speaking of the music, it’s been mixed at too high a level, drowning out other elements of the mix; this would be a problem with any soundtrack, but given that we’re dealing with the cheesiest work of Harold Faltermeyer’s career and songs from both Stephanie Mills and Dan Hartman, that only makes it that much worse.

No other audio options are included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The extras here, a direct port of those found on 2007’s “Jane Doe Edition” DVD, are presented in standard definition video.

Just Charge it to the Underhills: Making and Remembering Fletch (25 minutes) is a pretty good retrospective featurette (and the only worthwhile extra on the disc). DVD producer Jason Hillhouse eschews the standard talking-head interviews in favor of a Fletch-like approach, slumming around town, talking to various members of the cast and crew and making wiseass cracks (he even gets a couple good ones in at the expense of the absent Chase). 

From John Cocktoastin to Harry S. Truman: The Disguises (5 minutes) details how Fletch’s various disguises came about.

Favorite Fletch Moments (2 minutes) is nothing more than a collection of clips from the movie.

My Scenes, Universal’s standard bookmarking feature, is also included, and the disc is also BD-Live enabled.

Rounding things out is the movie’s theatrical trailer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Fletch is painfully funny and painfully annoying in almost equal measure. It’s the first quality that makes it worth seeing.