A host of colorful characters are invited to an isolated manor, where they come face-to-face with the man that is blackmailing all of them. That man shortly turns up dead, and the guests, each using an alias, the butler Wadsworth (Tim Curry), and the maid Yvette, scramble about, trying to figure out who the murderer is, and how more dead bodies keep turning up, while also keeping anyone from outside the manor figuring out what's happening.
For the purposes of this, I selected the option on the DVD to play one of the three endings at random, rather than all three. Might as well simulate the '80s experience, though I can't figure what it would have been like to go see this movie, then talk about it with someone else and find out they saw an entirely different solution to the crime.
I got the ending where Wadsworth is actually the blackmailer, a reveal Curry delivers with a delightfully smug charm, which is appropriate given Curry is the one who holds the movie together. He can play the adult in the room, who moves things along when the guests are descending into panic. But he can also turn up the manic energy when needed, driving the guests into a frenzy, like during his lengthy explanation of the series of events that have taken place. He sprints from room to room, pretending to be one or the other of them, forcing them to either chase him, or at times being chased by him.
The part where he uses Mr. Green (Michael McKean) as a proxy for Mr. Boddy (I love that the victim's name is "body"), shoving him on the floor, then hauling him up so that Green can scream, 'Will you stop that?!', only for Curry to reply with a drawn-out 'Nooo,' then shove Green headfirst into the bathroom.
Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White is a delight, especially the comment comparing husbands to Kleenex and 'flies are where men are most vulnerable.' The bit where the guests try to conceal the fact there are dead bodies everywhere from the cop, by either playing them off as drunk or pretending to make out with them is made even better by Wadsworth not realizing what they did and being confused at how chill the cop is ('It's a free country. I didn't know it was that free.') It sells the haphazard nature of what they managed, and how disorganized everything has become. This isn't a well-oiled group of sleuths out to solve a mystery, it's a bunch of frightened idiots trying to stay out of jail.
Likewise, the scene where the guests discover splitting up resulted in three more people are dead is well-played. They can't even muster up the energy to be frightened, instead moving silently en masse, confirming one corpse before shuffling wearily to the next. They might as well be in a line at the DMV. Next. *shuffle two steps* Next. It works both as a sign of how exhausted they've become, the fear of death or exposure can't even produce adrenaline now, and gives the audience a breather to take stock and reset. We can take in what's happened at the same time as them, where things stand, and whether we have any clue what's going on before Wadsworth dives into his explanation.
Just a very funny movie, lots of good lines and gags, and the mystery is really secondary to all that. Like a group of friends are actually playing the game, but at least a couple of them are drunk or just not taking it seriously and messing around for a laugh.
4 comments:
It's pretty much perfect (except the name is wrong, but probably better in the context of a film, but I digress) and almost certainly the best game adaptation ever.
They keep threatening to remake it and I think there is a zero chance of anything they do being an improvement.
We had a couple of attempts at a Cluedo (correct name) TV series over here, and while they were a fair idea (a mix of the board game and a murder mystery evening, with professional actors in the roles) the film is just so much better. The vague interactive element of the multiple endings, and those endings being random in the original showings, is brilliant.
So "Cluedo" is the original name of the game? That explains some references I didn't understand in various British mystery shows my dad watches. It's "Clue" over here, although I only ever played a couple of times when I was a kid. Didn't really have the patience for it.
With the TV series, was it one mystery spread over several episodes, or every episode was a different mystery to solve?
It's supposed to be a pun, because the board and pieces are similar to the board game Ludo, and the game is about gathering clues, so Cluedo. But I don't think you have Ludo over there.
In the TV series, it was a different murder every episode, but the same cast (although the cast changed each series). The celebrity guests would watch scenes and then interview the cast, and then try to deduce the killer, the location of the murder, and the murder weapon.
Yeah, Ludo's not ringing any bells. That's an interesting approach for a series. Gives viewers the chance to feel superior to celebrities, like Celebrity Jeopardy.
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