That we live in a time of reboots, remakes, spinoffs, or whatever the euphemism for recycling old content instead of coming up with something new is known for a long time, and Greg Mottola, who is remembered for successful comedies such as “The Daytrippers”, “Superbad “, “Adventureland”, “Paul” and the “Arrested Development” series, probably for reasons only understandable to him, he remembered the forgotten Fletch movies from the eighties with Chevy Chase. In the second half of the eighties, this legendary comedian starred in crime comedies about the investigative journalist Irwin Fletcher, and as good as he is, old Chevy is still too old to repeat the same role after more than 30 years, a new actor was chosen.
And Jon Hamm, who is still best remembered as Don Draper from the “Mad Man” series, and his Fletch is no longer an investigative journalist, but is now a freelancer specializing in the art world. And although the good, old Chevy is no longer there, Mottola decided on the old-fashioned, pointed style of humor that was popular at the time, but it did not turn out to be the happiest solution. Of course, Hamm isn’t exactly a comedic caliber in the footsteps of Chase, but it’s not really his fault and it’s obvious that he’s trying as hard as he can to pull this banal and ultimately stupid crime comedy out of the water.
Hamm’s Fletch is in a relationship with a rich Italian woman, Angela (Lorenza Izzo), the daughter of an old and rich aristocrat whose most expensive works of art first disappeared, and then he too was kidnapped. That’s why Fletch heads to Boston because there’s an art dealer there who might have some information. But practically as soon as he arrived in Boston, Fletch became the main suspect in the murder because he found the body of an unknown dead girl in the apartment where he was staying. Two police officers are constantly following him and are convinced that he is the killer, and in addition to finding the missing art, Fletch has to prove that he is not the killer.
And practically all the characters here are kind of eccentric, bizarre, reduced to caricatures, while Fletch is a sniffer who pokes his nose everywhere, a wise guy who seems incredibly relaxed and doesn’t seem to get excited at all about what’s happening to him. It seemed at the beginning that “Confess, Fletch” could even be a cute and fun crime comedy, but very quickly it turned into a farce full of forced humor that doesn’t fit at all and it was still quite disappointing in the end, although there also featuring Kyle MacLahlan, Marcia Gay Harden and John Slattery.
