Fletch by Gregory McDonald FTP: The Movie is Better

Fletch the movie is a classic. It’s easily one of my favorite movies of all time. I even like the sequel. While not as good as the original, it’s a bit too much shtick, I still enjoy it.

Only a few years ago I learned Fletch was a novel. My love for the movie built high expectations for the novel. I planned on it being better than the movie. But then I ran into the 1970s nihilism.

Fletch the movie is a product of the cinematic 1980s. Most movies from that era have a sense of optimism and hope. Even ridiculous action films like Commando enjoy a sense of optimism. Good defeats evil. Even the hedonism, the buxom babes saved by the handsome man, come with an atmosphere of enjoying life. The bad guys, they had babes, but it always looked like the bad guys and their babes were headed to a road of self-destruction. The optimism won out.

1970s movies, many of them at least, are nihilistic, cynical, and often unsettling. Even the action movies. Consider the famous action movie Death Wish starring Charles Bronson. It starts off as a simple revenge tale. A pacifist’s wife is raped and murdered, and his daughter is raped after some thugs followed them home from the grocery store. He seeks vengeance. But Bronson’s character starts to get off on killing criminals. He gets off on a double life. Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta, we tend to think of it more along the lines of the 1980s version of Footloose. But it’s a deeply unsettling movie. Rape, suicide, both men and women objectifying each other with deep cynicism, deception, and low intellect people running into cultural ceilings. It’s an unsettling movie with about three total dance scenes. Movies in this era lacked the optimism and fun of the 1980s.

When I opened the pages of Fletch I expected more of the character I’ve come to love on the screen. Chevy Chase’s version is a cad, but he’s charming, has a moral code underneath the snark, and has a sensitivity to him along with his sense of justice.