Confess, Fletch

“Confess, Fletch” is that absolute rarest of things these days: a movie by and for adults. It would be perfect if it was original IP, but you can’t have everything, and the two Fletch movies from the 80s which starred Chevy Chase were not exactly cinema’s high water mark. But Jon Hamm is just as fine a comedian as Chevy Chase, in a quieter way. His Fletch is a man of great confidence, who knows he can walk into a room, accurately assess everyone and tell them what they want to hear so he learns what he needs to know. For the most part, it works. And the movie works wonderfully, a laugh-out-loud crime caper where the resolution is the friends you made along to way.

Fletch arrives to his very fancy holiday rental house in Boston to the unhappy discovery of a young woman’s body on the floor. He calls the cops and waits around patiently, though not very respectfully towards them, while they examine the scene. It turns out he used to be an investigative reporter “of some renown,” and the police, namely Sgt Monroe (Roy Wood, Jr) and the more junior Gris (Ayden Mayeri), are suspicious, within reason. He’s in Boston to try to recover a stolen Picasso for his girlfriend Angela (Lorenza Izzo). And why does Angela so desperately need the Picasso? Because her father (Robert Picardo) has been kidnapped, and the painting is his ransom. The game is afoot! (No one says that.)

In the mix are journalist Frank (John Slattery), owner of the house Owen (John Behlmann), Owen’s influencer ex-wife Tatiana (Lucy Punch) and hypochrondriac art dealer Horan (Kyle MacLachlan). Owen’s neighbour is Eve (Annie Mumolo), who is a such a slutty, stoned mess her scarf catches on fire while she’s talking with Fletch and she doesn’t notice. It’s a howlingly funny comic turn only topped by that of Marcia Gay Harden as the Countess, who calls Fletch “Flesh” in a sultry purr as she asks for updates about the painting (not her husband) in between shopping excursions. Meanwhile Fletch is avoiding his police tails, leaping in and out of Ubers, and infiltrating the local yacht club with a stolen jacket and some supremely dorky dancing. Monroe has an infant he’s trying to sleep-train; Eve has a dog that pisses when it’s hungry; Horan keeps pens someone other than himself has touched in a silver mug engraved DIRTY. It’s the most tremendous comic work, all the more for being so understated. The scene in which Fletch pretends to be a fashion reporter and ascertains Tatiana doesn’t know what ‘bespoke’ means is just ridiculous. It’s such a treat to enjoy a movie like this, one that’s smart and doesn’t condescend to anybody, well, not in the audience, anyway. Why are they so rare? 

Director Greg Mottola and Jon Hamm have made three movies together – “Clear History,” “Keeping Up With the Joneses,” and now this. Mottola also made “Adventureland,” Ryan Reynolds’ best movie, as well as the juggernaut that remains “Superbad.” All of those, to an extent, have the same theme of the regular guy finally learning how to outdo the handsome bastard. Here the handsome bastard only has to outdo himself. Hamm has weaponised his looks and his air of decency and confidence into the comedy, instead of what he usually does, which is the other way around. Robert Downey Jr could almost do this part, but his melting-mercury brains would have gotten in his own way, whereas Hamm’s quick thinking kind of sneaks up on you, which is exactly right. There’s also a total lack of anxiety, which makes it obvious how much current American humour relies on that awkward emotion. Choosing less well-known actors for the police made them a wild card – we don’t really know what they are capable of – and giving the comic set-pieces to the women – Eve in her kitchen, the Countess in “Flesh’s” bed – means that Fletch spends most of the movie as the straight man, standing around to admire the actresses as they steal a city’s worth of scenery, each. But his comic turns are no less funny for being so understated, and they are also making a political point. 

It’s most bluntly felt in a scene where Fletch is snooping around on a sailboat and is challenged by an old man calling himself the Commodore (Kenneth Kimmins). Fletch pretends to be the nephew of an old friend of the Commodore’s, but gets out of answering awkward questions by telling the old man his old friend is dead, from a particularly gruesome accident that’s designed to be played for laughs, even as the old man starts to cry. There’s some justification for this in the scene, in that it’s meant as a direct attack on the unearned privilege and the unpunished crimes the Commodore has laughingly mentioned in passing to someone who he thinks operates the same way in the world. But Fletch’s glee at putting this old man in his place is not quite the victory for modernity the movie would like it to be. In the moment itself it just feels spiteful. Otherwise there is an anti-privilege motif that is something of a surprise in a movie based on recovering priceless artwork for a missing member of the nobility. It’s made clear Fletch’s twitting of Gris is based on respect and that his willingness to go to all this trouble for Angela is based on genuine feeling. His career path from journalism “of some renown” into this sort-of detective work is due to his feeling for the underdog. Even if that underdog is a missing Picasso. Most movies which attack class in America do it so directly – I am thinking of Rian Johnson’s work here – that they can be consumed as billionaire porn, therefore missing half the point. This one is sneakier, with a much more interesting aftertaste. 

The character of Fletch was invented by an author named Gregory Mcdonald, who won an Edgar for the “Confess, Fletch” novel back in 1977, and who wrote 11 Fletch novels in total. A quick glance at his obituary informs us that Mcdonald used his Fletch money to buy a farm in the Tennessee town where the Ku Klux Klan was founded and co-founded a group to fight them. In other words, there’s room for some pretty interesting sequels here. Normally a review asking for that is just smooching heinies, but just this once, we should get this. After all, movies for adults aren’t getting any younger.