Clue (1985)
I work for the State Department, and I’m a homosexual.
THE SUMMARY: A group of extravagant strangers is called to a mysterious mansion dinner party to discover they are all associated with a common blackmailer, and the bodies start to fall under the mysterious circumstances while everyone scrambles to uncover the killer’s identity. A few great one-liners here and there, but the rest is just a Yakety Sax bit - characters running around and yelling, with little actual intrigue in the mystery itself.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER DEREK: Another comedy favorite of mine - one of the few movies that successfully adapted a board game to film. Great lines, chemistry and acting, excluding the gentleman who plays Mr. Boddy.
THE BEST:
The zingers: There are some quality one-liners sprinkled here and there. The jokes about Mr. Green’s gayness are the funniest to me, including his ‘reveal’: ‘I work for the State Department, and I’m a homosexual.’ It’s arguably a redundant description, and of course it’s supposed to be his deep dark secret that would get him fired, but if we believe the ‘real’ ending, it was fake the whole time, and he actually is a federal agent decades ahead of his time in awkwardly and unnecessarily announcing sexual preferences and pronouns in conversational introduction. Indeed, Mr. Green volunteered this information himself. It wasn’t divulged by Wadsworth. Honorable mention for Miss Scarlett’s ‘I thought men like you were usually called a fruit’ line. Subtle points for Wadsworth’s ‘I butle, sir’ description of his job.
There’s always a fed: For a movie with three endings, it’s notable that every one involves a fed plant supposedly saving the day, of course after participating in all the criminal activity prior. When it comes to any mystery, observe the constant - there’s always a fed. You can count on it. Choose your friends wisely.
Based Mr. Boddy: Mr. Boddy is portrayed as a villain of sorts, collecting people’s secrets and blackmailing them for profit. Of course collecting information and threatening to reveal it for payment in this way is wrong, but it’s interesting to think about who the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ people in this arrangement are. His methods may be questionable, but Mr. Boddy is fighting corruption, he understands the threat of the commies, and for many of these people, he’s simply beating them at their own game: stealing.
In an era where holding DC corruption accountable is paramount, and the system seems incapable of doing it as designed, methods outside the traditional ones are always worth consideration. However, these days, it’s not just the ethics of the blackmail scheme that are questionable. It’s whether it would even work at all. The evidence of corruption is often out in the open, and the accountability never happens anyway. Imagine Mr. Boddy trying to blackmail Hunter Biden, for example. Sorry dude - no effect. The crack-fueled prostitute footie videos are already widely available.
THE WORST:
Please stop yelling: ‘I’m not shouting!’ Wadsworth exclaims. See, it’s funny because he is. And it’s apparently supposed to be funny that half the dialogue in this movie is shouted. I get the movie is trying to be absurd and silly, but this presentation gets grating quickly. It’s a shame - there is some quality writing here, but often it’s buried under overdramatized performance that’s supposed to add to the comedy but drastically diminishes it.
Please stop running around: Likewise, Wadsworth re-explaining the entire plot after just watching it is awful. First of all, I don’t need an entire summary. I just sat through it. But second, I certainly don’t need an entire summary that includes flail-sprinting to the site of each individual fact. It’s not funny. It’s a complete waste of time.
If comedy and mystery do mix, this ain’t it: I can give some credit for trying something original that isn’t commonly done well - mixing mystery and comedy. But that’s all the credit I can give, because this movie demonstrates why they generally don’t mix. The silly comedy cuts against any sincere interest in the mystery. Any dramatic intrigue in the mystery is erased by completely absurd scenes like making out with dead bodies to trick the cop. In trying to achieve both, the result is really neither. By the end I’m rarely laughing, and I also don’t care who did the crime or why. Oh, the gay fed did it? What a shock.
THE RATING: 2/5 Wickies. A Wicky for the joke or two that lands, but the rest was a suffer-fest of slapstick nonsense that cuts against any interest the mystery itself offers.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇
NEXT WEEK: 1917 (2019)
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