The New Fletch Movie Is Actually Pretty Good
"Confess, Fletch" isn’t as good as the original, but it's a surprisingly well-written comedy caper that brings back some of the original fun.
If you asked me my all-time favorite comedies, the movie Fletch (1985) lands somewhere in the top ten. Maybe the top five.
As a kid, I didn’t really appreciate how good Fletch was. Perhaps it stands out in part because of how few funny movies have been made since then. Fletch Lives (1989), which brought Chevy Chase back in the starring role, had a few funny parts, but mostly missed. And with a few notable exceptions—the Farrelly bros. and various Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell flicks—Hollywood comedies have in a downward spiral ever since the 80s ended.
This is why I received the renaissance of the Fletch movies—which are based on the books written by Gregory Mcdonald—with some trepidation. I had serious doubts Hollywood could make a funny Fletch movie in 2022, and when I learned that John Hamm was starring in the title role, it did little to alleviate my concerns.
I happen to like Jon Hamm as an actor, but he’s never struck me as funny.
Fortunately, the latest Fletch installment—Confess, Fletch—surpassed my rather low expectations by a fairly wide margin.
Written and directed by Greg Mottola, the director of Super Bad (2007), the movie begins with Fletch becoming a prime suspect of a murder as he works on a case, trying to track down a client’s stolen art collection.
It’s a clever who done it that takes the “former investigative journalist of some repute”—as Fletch likes to remind everyone he meets—to Italy and then Boston, where Fletch tries to clear his name, find the stolen art, and catch the real killer.
Like the old Fletch, there are fake names and dry one-liners that actually land. There’s even a couple scenes with Fletch's old editor Frank Jaffe (played by fellow Mad Men star John Slattery) who now runs the Boston Sentinel and cracks about millennial snowflakes too scared to return to work because of the pandemic.
The millennial cracks are balanced by a female detective’s jab about Fletch’s male white privilege; the joke falls a little flat, but most of the humor is Fletch actually works. Hamm’s Fletch isn’t as funny as Chevy Chase’s Fletch—he’d probably admit that himself—but he’s likeable, cool, and witty.
That last part—witty—is the most important. You won’t see Hamm’s Fletch wearing silly disguises or charging expensive lunches to the Underhills, but he possesses the same rapier wit as 1980s Fletch.
“Have you ever seen a spleen that large?”
“Not since breakfast.”
That line was from the original movie. Now take this one.
“Are you hungry, Fletch?”
“No, I ate yesterday.”
Hamm delivers the line deadpan. And though it’s a simple enough line, I saw it as a small triumph.
Confess, Fletch isn’t as good as the original Fletch, and that’s ok. It’s still pretty funny and worth watching if you want to catch something exceedingly rare today: a well-written comedy caper.