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| Foul Play |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 116 |
| Public Rating: 8.77 (26 votes) |
Director: Colin Higgins |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Thriller |
Year: 1978 |
| Writer(s): Colin Higgins |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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1978: a young screenwriter named Colin Higgins with 10 years to live makes his directorial debut, coming off the huge financial (but not critical) success of the Hitchcock rip-off Silver Streak, written by him, and just now starting to feel the effects of Harold And Maude being embraced as a cult classic. Along for the ride is Chevy Chase, wildly popular on "Saturday Night Live", and Goldie Hawn, reaching the height of her ditzy comic popularity. The result is unexpectedly mild, but financially succesful anyway. Some 20 years later, the film is not just a fun, if slightly bland, Hitchcock homage/rip-off, but, predicably enough, an enjoyable time capsule with some hilarious scenes.
The plot is a bland trifle hardly worth noting. Divorced and timid Hawn gets embroiled in a conspiracy to kill the pope at a performance of "The Mikado." No one believes her reports of people (albinos, men with scars) trying to kill her, and certainly no one believes that she had a man die on her in the movies, or that the body disappeared, etc. Only Chevy Chase can (rather quickly) put all the pieces together and use his powers as a police officer to both protect and romance her.
There's an enjoyable light-hearted vibe to this movie that can only be really enjoyed in retrospect. No wonder Chase fans were disappointed in '78: his anarchic comic skills subdued in this romantic role, his best comic moments are mere wisecracks, tossed off effortlessly. There's nothing really special about the humor here, but in retrospect it's nice to see Chase play a straight-up nice guy rather than deceiver or smarmy jerk for once. The best moments go to Hawn and Dudley Moore: she has a terrific interrogation scene, while Moore has one hilarious scene as a swinger with a fully-loaded pad, complete with porno projector and inflatable sex dolls, not to mention a bed that appears with the sound of trumpets; this scene is undeniably an influence on Austin Powers.
Though with its unoriginal plot and blithe illogic Foul Play threatens to become bland, it's saved by its stellar performances (including Burgess Meredith as an elderly kung-fu expert, in a long and cruel senior citizen match-up), pleasant manner (there are no serious shocks here), time capsule feel, and by its dated subtext: that organized religion is a leech upon true spirituality, with all sorts of bad effects. No one's idea of brilliant, trailblazing filmmaking, but a fun look back at an era where Hitchcock ripoffs were just starting to become all too commonplace; Foul Play may even be slightly better than the master's last, the disappointing and also California-based Family Plot.
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