Genre Guesstimation – Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre has been chosen by Ghezal of Ghezal Plus Movies and she has chosen the genre of Film Noir Movies

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of July by sending them to noirghezal@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Ghezal!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Film Noir.…

“When I arrived in Carlotta, I thought of the words Marlowe had said to me over fifteen years ago: Dead men don’t wear plaid. Huh. Dead men don’t wear plaid. I still don’t know what it means. ” – Rigby Reardon

Number of Times Seen – 1 (9 Jul 2017)

Brief Synopsis – A detective is hired to find out who murdered a prominent cheese scientist who was on the verve of an astounding discovery.

My Take on it – This film utilizes a very interesting plot device that unfortunately doesn’t work as well as one would hope it would.

The idea to have the characters interact with characters from old Noir movies is quite clever but the inattentiveness of it all wears off quite quickly.

Steve Martin was an interesting choice for the lead but he is much better at roles that involve a bit of humor or sarcasm even when playing a somewhat dramatic role.

Personally, I think that the concept utilized here works much better on a smaller scale and in order to see a great example of that, you should check out what Billy Crystal did at the Oscars.

Check out some clips here:

Bottom Line – Great idea that just doesn’t work as well as one would hope. The concept of integrating famous characters from noir movies into this films plot is a great one, but it loses it’s effect quite quickly. Martin is ok as the lead but seems a bit miscast as a straight laced Private Detective. I personally prefer shorter uses of this whole concept similar to what Billy Crystal was able to achieve at the Oscar Ceremonies over the years.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The movie was initially planned by Steve Martin and Carl Reiner to be a ’30s-era film titled “Depression”. After Reiner incorporated some footage of a ’30s star into the movie, he and Martin decided that the entire movie should be done that way, and re-wrote it into a mock-detective story. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not really. Clever idea, but it just doesn’t work as well as when Billy Crystal did it at the Oscars.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z