Sadly Over-hyped

Lack of good storyline.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

J. Scott Smart is pretty hefty without being morbidly obese. Some jokes are made about his girth and his love of good food because this was back in the day when jokes could still be made about people who were different from the stereotypical American. As a motion picture actor, he has the charisma of a damp rag.It's a routine B movie, a screen adaptation of the radio show popular at the time. Not much effort has gone into it. A nice dentist has been coshed and his body thrown out a window. It looks like suicide to the police but the dentist's assistant, Jane Meadows (looking fine), suspects there was more to it. The dental records and X rays of a certain Roy Clark (Rock Hudson, as good as he'd ever been) are missing. So what's up? The investigation takes Smart from New York to Los Angeles where he runs into varied characters, as is usual in these stories, except for two Jewish truck driver who have sharp, witty dialog and deliver it well but are directed a lento. The major characters like Julie London (yum) have flashbacks. ("I remember the first time I met Roy...") There's nothing notable about any of them. The attempts are humor are pedestrian.The clotted plot leads to a shoot out at the end, with the killer trapped inside a circus big tent at night. It looks like curtains for the clown. But no! He uses one of the prop cannons to turn himself into a human cannonball, launches himself through the air, and lands on a blue and yellow plastic blow-up raft in the form of a grinning horse, just a few yards off the beach at the resort town of Cancún, Mexico, where waiters immediately rush out and ply him with piña coladas and seviche. He adopts a NeutraSlim diet, loses one tonne, and finds himself surrounded with tan and radiantly healthy bikini-clad blonds. He forgets all about the Fat Man, and maybe you should too.Anyway, it all ends properly.

I might get into some hot water here because the value of film adaptations from popular radio serials are held high for many. I am admittedly not familiar with the radio show to which this Castle film was based. In all honesty, I am quite convinced that it played better without the visual component. There are too many flashbacks that slog and mire the plot progression. The effect is an instability of mood throughout the film. Castle's direction is plodding and does little to compensate. There are some good moments of mobile framing and blocking/staging, however, most often Castle relies on simple short pan reframes and frontality in his staging. Not only does this strategy limit auteurship but also prevents provocative psychological portrayals of the characters. This film is carried literally and figuratively on the weight of the reputation of the titular character. The fat man has his moments - corny, quaint and digressive. That being said, his dancing number should become a contemporary viral meme - hashmark Twinkle Toes. Clown of renown, Emmett Kelly makes an appearance and the climax of the film is set around the circus grounds. You might think fun times but don't forget that impressionable Kelly hobo long face.

The Fat Man opens with the murder of a dentist. We spend a good chunk of the next hour wondering not so much who did it, as why. It's a fairly straightforward plot, but one with many threads and characters, including a clown, some dental records, a just-released convict who comes into some money and then disappears, and a police detective who—unusually for private eye movies—is open, cooperative, and even intelligent! J. Scott Smart looks comfortable in the role of Brad Runyan, aka the Fat Man. Familiar faces fill the rest of the cast, including Jayne Meadows in a good serious role as the dentist's nurse; Jerome Cowan as the helpful if bemused policeman; Clinton Sundberg as a kind of goofball assistant; and an eager-looking young Rock Hudson as the con and Julie London as his sometime girlfriend.The Fat Man was apparently a radio detective making a jump to movies that didn't take; not having any familiarity with the radio program, I can only say that this portly detective is considerably more physically active than the obvious comparison: whereas Nero Wolfe rarely emerges from his brownstone on 35th Street, Brad Runyan thinks nothing of hopping a flight to California, risking life and limb in a shootout, or even dancing in a nightclub. (He does, however, share Wolfe's passion for fine food.) To put it another way—Smart as Runyan is easily closer akin to William Conrad as Cannon than Conrad as Wolfe.The film as a whole offers bits of humor, some action, and a pretty fair mystery with quite a well done climactic scene. If they had indeed turned this into a series, I would seek out the other entries; however, I'm afraid 1951 was not the right time to start a detective series—at least, not one for the big screen.

When I was growing up, pre-television, we used to listen to many radio shows. One of these was The Fat Man, starring J. Scott Smart. This, as with some other radio shows, was made into a movie. The casting of Smart in the title role was good, since he looked the part and the sound was identical to the radio program.In virtually every radio show, Bradford Runyan is hired to solve a crime; the film carries on the tradition. However, the radio program lasted for only a half hour, and even though there was a "time compression" effect, there was time to do significantly more in the film. As an example, Runyan asks a lady to dance, and when she accepts, he acquits himself well. That could never have worked on the radio program, to be sure.For those of us who remember the program, there's a lot of nostalgia in the film. For those who never heard the show (such as my wife), it's still okay, but probably not as valued.