Thanks for the memories!

Beautiful, moving film.

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Likable comedy murder mystery. Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn) gets involved with an assassination attempt. Cop Chevy Chase is hired to protect her. There's more to the plot but that's the basics.This is a beautiful movie--shot on location in San Francisco. The stars are likable; the script is interesting, if all little too confusing and there are many funny--and suspenseful--moments throughout. I saw this back in 1978 and loved it and it still holds up beautifully. A lot of people says this plagiarizes Hitchcock. It does a little but it's so entertaining it doesn't really matter.Chase is good in his first film after leaving "Saturday Night Live" and Hawn is just delightful. There's also strong support from Burgess Meredith, Brian Dennehy and Dudley Moore. Also there are some beautiful shots of San Francisco all through the movie. And it starts off great with the Barry Manilow song "Ready To Take A Chance Again". Just basically a great big fun commercial film. Well worth catching. I'm only giving it a 9 because it IS a little too long.

Colin Higgens wrote and directed this comedy/thriller clearly inspired by director Alfred Hitchcock. Goldie Hawn stars as a lonely young woman who gets mixed up in espionage and murder after a man she was seeing dies, and leaves a microfilm with her which some crooks want, and will do anything to obtain. Chevy Chase plays a San Francisco detective who meets her in his investigation, and is immediately attracted, and they must team up to stop a sinister assassination plan involving the Pope. Burgess Meredith costars as a wacky neighbor of Goldie's, as does Dudley Moore as a love interest. Though a hit at the time, this film goes on too long, becoming increasingly ridiculous.

The first time I saw Foul Play, I didn't care for it a whole lot and this time, I was able to enjoy it a lot. I laughed a lot more, and I appreciated not only the dialogue but that Colin Higgins' film is an homage at heart. Although what I didn't like about it before still stands, and it concerns what else might be at its heart. But at any rate, Foul Play is a deference to Sir Alfred Hitchcock, more than a few of whose films are alluded to throughout the film. The basis of an innocent person becoming tangled in a snarl of conspiracy is at the hub of Hitchcock films such as The 39 Steps, Saboteur, North by Northwest and, most conspicuously in this case, The Man Who Knew Too Much, which encouraged Foul Play's opera house climax. When Gloria is assaulted in her home, she rummages inside her knitting basket and nearly settles on a pair of scissors to protect herself, a citation of Dial M for Murder. As well, the plot embraces a MacGuffin, in the shape of the celluloid roll hidden in the cigarette pack.But about the plot. The conspiracy that's pursued and ultimately of course unraveled by the movie's extraordinarily charming pair of stars is the diabolical work of the Tax the Churches League, a militant radical group maintaining that organized religion is a crooked, gluttonous con connecting billion-dollar corporations. Well, indeed, religious organizations like the Catholic Church, which the League plans to strike in Foul Play, are not obligated to contribute to their community in equal measure to the tax breaks they're forever awarded, nor can we ever seem to fully hold them accountable for any wrongdoings. And yet, somehow, the ruthless villains here are a progressive confederacy seeking to do so, and are portrayed in doing that as using assassination and also as being freaks. One henchman is albino, a condition rather indecently used to further estrange him from us as a villain. Another of their thugs is a killer with a scar.I wonder how much more gripping Foul Play's plot could've been not only imitating Hitchcock's in form but also in narrative workings. Why not the Archdiocese of San Francisco itself be at the heart of a political conspiracy, as, historically, the Catholic Church constantly has been? Our lead sleuths stumble upon information that the revenue needs of San Francisco are met by the Archdiocese at only a fraction of the rate all these different secular non-profits are taxed. A couple of expository characters are organizers of disease and poverty associations that now have to put their meager proceeds toward taxes because they couldn't meet all their requirements, and the detective and the girl look for the Archdiocese's tax-exempt standards. They're nowhere to be found. There could've still been plenty of great vignettes about Dudley Moore's would-be ladies' man, Burgess Meredith's old landlord who knows karate and dwarfs victimized by mistaken identity. But we'd care, just as we did that Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood would save Dame May Witty from the occupiers in The Lady Vanishes and that the factory worker could stop the Nazi collaborators from bombing the Navy ship in Saboteur.Regardless, Foul Play is undeniably a good light-hearted time at the movies. Chevy Chase is always an amusing presence because his persona is particular, a nice, pleasant guy with not a whole lot on his mind except extremely simple things. He's a meat-and-potatoes guy, but with an airy disposition. He's always smiling, and not really very aware of things outside of him like the table in front of him or that he's in mortal danger. This whole persona is reinforced by every delivery of every line. And as his counterpart of the film's vintage-style duo, Goldie Hawn uses her cutesy blonde naivete and tee-hee smiles to extreme effect as the classic damsel in distress. The less you think about Foul Play, the better.

I like this film that stars both Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, just not as much as "Seems Like Old Times". That one was just really funny throughout the whole movie, while this one has points that are kind of slow and it is a rather long movie. Part of the reason is that Chevy is just not quite as funny in this one as one might suspect him to be. Sure he has a few humorous parts, but for the most part the majority of the laughs belong to Goldie Hawn, Burgess Meredith, Billy Barty and Dudley Moore. All of these characters have really funny scenes while one that is really funny featuring Chevy is just not found. Granted he gets out a good line or two like after Goldie attacks poor Billy Barty's character, but that is about the extent of his humor in this one. Still, Goldie is the star and she has a lot of funny lines as a poor woman tired of being alone who takes a chance on a mysterious stranger and ends up in a crazy scheme involving an albino man and a dying man's words of beware the drawf. Of course, she also has to contend with disappearing bodies and police officers that do not believe her, but at least one takes a shine to her. She also has to deal with strange short salesmen and a overly amorous man who thinks he is about to hit it big. It is funny for the most part and there is a bit of mystery to it as well, but I would say it is most assuredly a comedy more than it is a thriller. However, that being said there are a lot of thriller aspects to this one as well.