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The Cheap Detective
Neil Simon’s star-studded The Cheap Detective tries to be a parody of film-noir. It instead reveals that it doesn’t know film-noir from Gene Kelly, but it still emits enough charisma and intelligent, if inconsequential, jokes to make it acceptable light entertainment. The film is an innocent, fluffy comedy that was over before I knew it, and I laughed out loud several times. Most of the laughs are courtesy of Peter Falk as Lou Peckinpaugh, Private Investigator. Falk, of course, is best known as TV’s bumbling but brilliant Lieutenant Columbo, and it is difficult to get this archetypal image out of our mind as he plays a boozing, womanizing detective in the Humphrey Bogart tradition. This adds to Falk’s charm; most of the time, I would caution against an actor winking at the audience in a spoof—I’ve always considered it something a cheat instead of a genuine comedic strategy. In this case, because of Falk’s immediate association with his alter ego of primetime television, winks work to his advantage. He plays the romantic P.I. with a mocking smirk, as if he is telling us, “Of course this is absurd, but I’ll get back to work soon. Just go along with it for now.” We do, and we smile. The plot is a combination of the great Bogie/noir films—namely, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, and The Maltese Falcon, though The Cheap Detective doesn’t tie the films’ plot strands together so much as plays them out like separate, smaller films with Falk’s character in the center of them all. The film sticks so closely to the plotlines of these classics that it will contain no surprises for anyone who has seen them, and anyone who hasn’t are not likely get many of the jokes. But that’s okay—the film still contains some laughs for those familiar with the films and the genre. Most of them come not from the obvious, not entirely successful gags concerning the plotline(s), but rather in the smaller, subtler moments in which writer Neil Simon and director Robert Moore play around with noir clichés, as well as the now classic elements of the films that they are spoofing. An example, from a scene parodying Casablanca: Falk’s old lover, who left him years ago, tells him, “I memorized the letter I wrote you long ago. It said, ‘Dear Louis, I love you more than life itself. But to run off with you now, when my country is in danger, would be an act of cowardice. I'm marrying Paul DuChard, because –.’” She stops. Falk says, “That’s all you remember?” “Well,” she admits, “it was a long time ago. I’ve written thousands of letters since then.” There is also much to be said about the setting, which creates a bizarre but inspired scenario. Simon places the film in some sort of alternate dimension, where Nazis walkabout the street in San Francisco in World War II and actually have police authority, and spies attempt to thwart their every move. It is easy to believe that a small bar in the expansive deserts of Africa could harbor Nazis, French spies, and cheap private investigators, but setting the film in the familiar streets of San Francisco works as a sort of outlandish substitute. Just when we settle into the picture and allow the Nazis to lead us to believe that we’re somewhere on another hemisphere, the film gives us another touristy shot of the California Bay Area to jolt us back into the film’s reality. It brings a smile to our face, because it forces us to constantly shift gears. As a Sam Spade-like character, Falk naturally has several women characters on his tail. They include (stop me if I’m moving too fast) an identity-switching spy (Madeline Kahn), a doe-eyed secretary (Stockard Channing), an old lover (Louise Fletcher), the wife of a dead partner (Marsha Mason), the wife of a Russian terrorist (Ann-Margaret) and a nightclub singer (Eileen Brennan—whose entrance song is one of the best moments of the picture). The funniest scene in the film is when all of these women come to visit Falk in his apartment, and he is in the constant state of trying to hide them from one another in different rooms. It is a scene that is worthy of early Marx Brothers—Moore’s direction from room to room and Falk’s exasperated detective create plenty of giggles. Still, for all of the noir that is spoofed in The Cheap Detective, the film fails to capture the feel of the genre, and I have a feeling that it would have been a funnier picture if it had. Film-noir is an American archetype with its dark themes and sinister characters, which certainly makes it ripe subject for parody—see the comical tones that Robert Altman inserts in his Phillip Marlowe film The Long Goodbye. This film feels more like a spoof of noir plots, but not its motifs. Since we are already familiar with the films that it parodies, most of the biggest gags are forced and contrived. But Falk’s comedic touch and Simon’s insertion of many charming moments and lines manage to keep the film afloat for its duration. Cast: A film by Columbia Pictures.
Directed by Robert Moore. Written by Neil Simon. Rated PG, for
brief language, comedic violence, and plenty of innuendo. Running
time: 92 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date:
June 23, 1978. |
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