Fletch (1985)

Fletch arrives from 1985 bearing a single joke told in many accents. Chevy Chase plays an investigative reporter who adopts disguises the way other men change shirts, and the film's pleasures are almost entirely a function of his willingness to commit to a bad wig. The plot concerns an insurance scheme, a bigamous aviation executive, and a corrupt police chief running heroin through the beach. None of this is freighted with contemporary meaning. It is a crime comedy that wants to be liked, and mostly it is.

The picture holds a strange position in the canon. It was adapted from Gregory Mcdonald's novels, survived a decade of studio rejection, and became a modest hit on the strength of its star's smirk. The supporting players drift through with professional ease. A wealthy villain schemes, a tennis club snob gets his tab abused, an heiress swings a racket at the climax. The film observes class resentment, but only as a source of gags. Money is a plot device, not a thesis. The Lakers appear, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar among them, purely because the hero likes basketball.

Assessing this against the social consciousness of the present decade yields a clean sweep of nothing. There is no representational argument, no gender critique, no environmental appeal, no examination of race or capital or the body or the mind. The movie is sarcastic rather than preachy, and its sarcasm is aimed at authority figures who deserve it, which is a mood, not a message. We are left with a well-executed vehicle for a specific comedic personality, dated in its attitudes and entirely untroubled by them. The classification is straightforward. Zero across the board, and the film would not have it any other way.