Cody Hamman doesn't have as much Film Appreciation for Fletch Lives as he has for Fletch, but he does have some.
I've never understood why producers and/or studios pay for the rights to turn an author's novels into a film or TV show, then just set the source material aside and build new stories around the lead character. A prime example of this is Fletch Lives, the 1989 sequel to Universal Pictures' 1985 adaptation of the Gregory Mcdonald novel Fletch. When looking for a story to base another Fletch movie on, Mcdonald had eight other Fletch novels they could have chosen from. Mcdonald's novels aren't just clever and well-written, they also read like movies on the page, they're ready for an easy translation to the screen. But instead of choosing any bit of that Fletch material they had at hand, they hired screenwriter Leon Capetanos to craft an entirely new story around the Fletch character. Fletch Lives has no basis in Mcdonald, and it's lacking because of that.
The good news is that Fletch director Michael Ritchie returned to the helm, with Chevy Chase reprising the role of Los Angeles Times journalist Irwin M. Fletcher and composer Harold Faltermeyer returning to deliver another great synth score. The story begins with Fletch being informed that an aunt of his has passed away and left him an 80 acre plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana that he has never seen before. He gleefully heads off to retire on this property, but his hopes are dashed when he finds that the mansion is falling apart. Things get even worse for him in Louisiana when he spends the night with his aunt's attorney Amanda Ray Ross (Patricia Kalember) and wakes up to find him dead beside him in the bed. Murdered.
This gets Fletch accused of committing the murder, so he has to figure out who killed Amanda while she slept beside him. As the story goes on, the murder proves to be one part of a larger mystery that involves someone trying to intimidate Fletch into leaving Thibodaux, an anonymous buyer making big money offers for the plantation property, and the fact that Fletch's aunt had at one time intended to leave the property to shady televangelist Jimmy Lee Farnsworth (R. Lee Ermey), owner of the local theme park Bible Land. There's also some stuff in here about a chemical company dumping toxic waste, because everybody seemed to be talking about toxic waste in 1989.
Things aren't all bad for Fletch in Thibodaux, he does make some friends while he's there. One of the best things about the movie is Cleavon Little's performance as Calculus Entropy, the plantation caretaker who doesn't actually seem to take care of anything. Fletch also gets some support from local lawyer Hamilton Johnson (Hal Holbrook), who is not a fan of Farnsworth, and he gets a second love interest in realtor Becky Culpepper (Julianne Phillips), who Fletch first meets when she informs him that someone is offering $250,000 for the plantation. And there's Ben Dover, played by Randall "Tex" Cobb, who Fletch meets in a jail cell... Never mind, Ben Dover's not someone he's likely to keep in touch with.
Fletch Lives has a much goofier tone and sense of humor than its predecessor, taking the silliest elements of the first Fletch and pushing them even further. Fletch wore disguises and gave ridiculous fake names in the '85, so he does even more of that in '89 - we even get Chevy Chase dressed up as a female maid, with an old man hitting on him. Fletch fantasized about playing for the Lakers in '85, here he has a song ("Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah") and dance fantasy sequence, complete with animated animals. This is goofier than anything Fletch should be, which is a big reason why I consider Fletch Lives to be a step down. That, along with Mcdonald being better at crafting mysteries than Capetanos was.
That said, there is fun to be had with this movie. Chase's delivery of the lines and the occasional physical comedy is hilarious, and he has great interactions with the supporting characters, especially with Calculus. My favorite disguise of the film involves a gray wig, big glasses, and a little mustache, which Fletch wears to get behind-the-scenes of the Jimmy Lee Farnsworth TV show, using the name Claude-Henry Smoot. Then when he needs to get an employee away from a set-up where they're giving Farnsworth information on people in the audience through a earpiece, Fletch introduces himself to that employee not as Claude-Henry Smoot, but as Peter Lemonjello. Other than "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", the line "Peter Lemonjello, your house is on fire" is the thing that sticks with me the most between viewings of Fletch Lives.
I'm glad this movie exists because it gives us the chance to enjoy watching Chase play Fletch for a second time, but I would have much rather gotten a sequel based on a Mcdonald novel. With a better story and a tone like the previous film's, maybe the sequel could have lived up to the first movie's box office haul and we could have gotten more Chase Fletch films. Based, of course, on Mcdonald novels.
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