FLETCH—-Gregory McDonald’s best-selling humorous mysteries featured a glib, laconic investigative reporter named Irwin M. Fletcher. That character is fairly well incarnated in this 1985 fluff by Chevy Chase, and surprisingly, it’s not all that bad. Surprising, mainly because Chase had been in so many dogs in a row prior to this and had run his limited shtick so fervently into the ground (or down throats) that many of his fans had written him off as just another self-indulgent smirker, Burt Reynolds without the physique.

But the Chase persona fit nicely into a passable characterization here, so he can be credited for a step back in the right direction. Cleverly constructed plot-wise, slickly directed by Michael Ritchie, the $8,000,000 movie is about ten minutes too long at 110, but all in, it makes for a pleasant diversion. If you’re not into cutting to more Chase, you might play tag with all the neat bits of supporting work that pepper the story with a fair roster of chuckles.

DOCTOR: “You know, it’s a shame about Ed.”  FLETCH: “Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.”  DOCTOR: “He was dying for years.”   FLETCH: “Sure, but…the end was very…very sudden.”   DOCTOR: “He was in intensive care for eight weeks.”  FLETCH: “Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died. That was extremely sudden.”

On tap are Joe Don Baker, Dan Wheeler-Nicholson, Robert Libertini, Geena Davis, Tim Matheson, M. Emmett Walsh, George Wendt, Kenneth Mars, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Burt Gilliam and William Sanderson. Andrew Bergman (Blazing Saddles, Soapdish) wrote the screenplay. Scoring good reviews and $60,000,000 in receipts, it prompted a sequel, Fletch Lives.