Confess, Fletch

I am a big fan of The Fletch Mystery Series by Gregory MacDonald. The first Chevy Chase film was all right, I guess, but that seemed more of a showcase for Chase's wackiness rather than a showcase of the unique character of Irwin Maurice Fletcher. The fact that Chase used the role to mug and do a bunch of quick-change disguises is quite nonsensical. Fletch does not need to put on wigs or false teeth when conning people because it's the first time they've ever met. The disguises in the Chase films are a gimmick and a poorly thought out one as well. Irwin Maurice Fletcher isn't a Master of Disguise or a Chameleon. He's simply a pathological liar. When this movie has him ask the youth he hired to paint his van to repeat back what he told them his name was, and they're incredulous he wants to know his own name, even if that scene is not in any of the Fletch books, it's the character at its essence. And the movie can't entirely give us the Fletch from the books. In the books he DOES sleep with the Contessa, and it's portrayed as no big deal by either Fletch or Andi (which is insane). And that's not something audiences would stand for. Even in a movie back in the 1980's I would find that a stretch. Fletch does a LOT of crap (particularly in the first book) that crosses the line from lovable to despicable and outright criminal. If they don't tone that down, they'll at least need rethink what is and isn't acceptable for viewers of a film that a reader of a book would let slide.

I'm not 100% down with Monroe. Francis Xavier Flynn was a memorable enough character, MacDonald spun him off into his own mystery series, but Monroe isn't doing it for me. In fairness to the film, because it's set in the modern age they very well couldn't have given Flynn his sketchy WWII backstory from the book. But Flynn was great because he was so freaking sarcastic, Fletch is almost the straight man in their scenes together. Fletch runs rings around Monroe. Flynn runs rings around Fletch. Monroe cockily states HE (and Grizz) solved the case, but in the book, Flynn does it behind Fletch's back, and it's an afterthought and anticlimax. Like the film, every lead Fletch had turned out to be wrong, but Fletch is entirely missing from the climax of the art dealer's arrest and it's a total surprise. Bad idea for a movie, granted, but Monroe doesn't impress me as much.

Also I don't like the movie giving Grizz so much of the solve. She's a stand-in for Grover and while her buddy-cop dynamic with Monroe is different than Flynn's with Grover (Grover detests Flynn on every level, and we learn Grover isn't his name but a derogatory insult Flynn calls him). I understand she's a different character and that Monroe is too. But man, Flynn being the only guy in the Fletch Mysteries who ever had his number was kind of a cool thing.

I'm wondering if there were rights issues involved as to why Flynn and Grover weren't used. That might be it.

Another thing: Flynn never arrests Fletch in the book. Why? Because Fletch isn't guilty, and Reluctant Flynn would never make that mistake. What's the point of giving Slo-Mo Monroe a similar moniker while utterly ignoring the selling point of the character?

I'll tell you what I don't like about the books. Almost all of them end abruptly and unsatisfyingly. The movie does not and perhaps teases the next case in "Fletch's Fortune". But really while "Confess, Fletch" is arguably the second best Fletch book after the first (it notably won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel the year after the first book), if they were gonna reboot the franchise, I would have liked to have seen a better take on the novel "Fletch" itself. If they were gonna play fast and loose with the Flynn stand-in, I would have preferred starting entirely over instead of one book in. Hell, I would have accepted "Fletch Won" as a good first installment for the reboot (Kevin Smith wanted to make that for awhile I think, although Jon Hamm would have been too old for that one).

The good news is the Fletch books themselves hop around Fletch's timeline and are mostly NOT told in the order they happened. If they DO wind up making more Hamm Fletch movies, they can redo the first novel with zero problems.

John Slattery was a riot as Frank. The old editor from the book (I believe his name was Jack) was nowhere near as memorable or hilarious as this.

I liked it. It was truer to the source material than the Chase films (particularly the awful second one based on an original story) but I still wish we had gotten a version of Flynn. And if that wasn't possible, I wish Monroe hewed a bit closer to Flynn's selling points. ****.