Gloria (Goldie Hawn), in an attempt to break out of a rut, picks up a man whose car broke down. They make plans to meet at a movie later that night, and he leaves his cigarettes with her before leaving. When he shows up at the movies, late, he dies, after warning her to 'beware the dwarf.' When Gloria alerts the theater manager that there's a dead man in the audience, the body is missing.
Soon, she finds herself pursued by a man with a scar, an albino, and a black limo. People keep dying around her, then vanishing when the police show up. Despite Gloria's inability to describe the events in a way that doesn't make her sound like she's either stoned or a ditz (Hawn does a very good job playing someone trying to convince people she's sincere and failing utterly), she eventually convinces Lieutenant Carlson (Chevy Chase) that she really is caught up in something, though his partner (played by Brian Dennehy) remains skeptical.
The "something" turns out to be an assassination, although the movie isn't concerned with a mystery, so there's not much progress in terms of the characters figuring that out. They're ultimately told who the target is once the bad guys capture them. The photographs that would give away the target, hidden in the cigarette pack, get burned by Hawn's landlord (Burgess Meredith) to keep his pet python from eating the smokes. No one ever actually finds the photos, which is kind of nuts.
Also, when the pack burns up in the fireplace, the camera lingers on the python, who is watching and snickers. That is what the captions said, "snickers." Why does the snake think that's funny? I have no idea.
It's not a thriller, with Hawn being pursued for reasons she can't understand, by people no one can find, because two of her escapes involve her meeting up a twitchy, desperately horny conductor played by Dudley Moore (it feels like Mike Myers based a lot of Austin Powers on this guy) and embarrassing him terribly. Those scenes kind of swing between sad, creepy, or funny, depending on what second you're watching.
Hawn and Chase don't have much romantic chemistry - no doubt difficult to fit into the picture with Chase's ego taking up so much space - though the movie keeps trying to impress us that it exists. Mostly via phone conversations between Hawn and her coworker friend at the library, who is constantly encouraging her to beware of men with only one thing on their mind, and to carry a weapon (she loans out hers, and they do enable Hawn to escape once when she's abducted.) The movie probably should have leaned into the fact Chase is very good playing a guy who thinks he is terribly clever and charming, but who most people found obnoxious or tedious. It's when he's trying to be cool and fails - like when he warns Hawn to be careful getting aboard his houseboat because the walkway is slick, then promptly falls in the water - that he's at his best.
It's longer than it needs to be - there's a long stretch where Chase and Hawn are trying to get across San Francisco to stop the assassination and have to keep getting new cars because Chevy Chase is apparently a terrible driver and keeps wrecking their rides - but Hawn's good in this, I always like seeing Burgess Meredith, and there are a couple of funny side gags (Hawn trying desperately to get the attention of two old ladies playing Scrabble, one scoring big spelling out profanities.)
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