Confess, Fletch (2022) Review

Plot: Irwin M. “Fletch” Fletcher (Jon Hamm) is framed for murder while searching for his girlfriend’s father’s missing paintings.

Review: I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m some big Fletch fan. Never read the books, saw both movies and enjoyed them enough to own on DVD, but haven’t watched either in years. The Fletch movies fall into that Chevy Chase cauldron of funny movies he made in the 80s, slotted somewhere amongst the Vacation films, Funny Farm, Spies Like Us and Three Amigos.

That being said, I still wanted Confess, Fletch to be a good movie and for another potential franchise to spawn from it. Unfortunately, this movie sucks. I doubt they’ll want to continue the franchise with this movie, so it’s either back to the drawing board, make the Fletch books into a Netflix series (because hey, all books now need a Netflix series) or wave the big adios to Fletch as he rides into the sunset.

Where do I begin? Well, let’s go with the positives first. Jon Hamm, while no Chevy Chase, does admirably in the role, and I believe he could be Fletch. With a better script, the man would be hilarious, I think. However, the screenplay was pretty gawdawful. There were a couple of laughs, and Marcia Gay Harden stole the show as a bonkers countess who imposes herself on an unwitting and unwilling Fletch. If the movie was Hamm and Harden playing off each other, this would have been gold.

Instead, we’re left with utter confusion. At one point, I got so confused about who the characters were, I thought Kyle MacLachlan was someone else. There are too many unmemorable and useless characters in the movie, and they add nothing to it but more confusion. A drugged-out landlord, a trippy ex-wife, a hippy neighbour, an ex-boss with a foul mouth, two graffiti artists, the boyfriend of the murdered woman all shuffle through with not one iota impact. I suppose they’re all supposed to be red herrings or funny, but most aren’t. Take John Slattery’s character – all he does is curse. The f-bomb is dropped literally every other word. Isn’t that funny? He can say fuck! HAHAHAHAHAHA. Isn’t that so funny because he says it every other word? Yeah. I’m convinced a moron wrote this movie. As for who the killer is? Evident from the onset and not particularly clever.

Then there’s the cops. Good lord, the cops. You’ve got the veteran male cop who suffers from being overly tired and is slow to do his job and his partner, a young female trainee who seems stuck up and annoying. They both hate Fletch – why? Because script, that’s why. There’s no reason for them to – until the end. Then, the female cop tells him it’s because of his arrogance and “white privilege.” Did I mention she’s white? Yup, this movie is woke, too, and embarrassingly so. The two graffiti artists are both black, and Fletch’s interactions with them are cringeworthy, to say the least. The entire exchange is Fletch admitting he’s white and therefore goofy and the male graffiti artist playing off this. I can guarantee you shit like this is never said in real life. Only in a Hollywood movie where everyone’s brains are located somewhere north of their assholes. Oh, and the line where the one cop asks Fletch, “Who do people hate more, reporters or cops?” and Fletch looks at him as if he’s nuts and says, “Cops.” Riiight. Cops bad, white bad, everything else good. Got it. Thanks, Confess, Fletch for simplifying that for me.

What more is there to say? The girlfriend is nice to look at but gets tiresome very quickly as well. The score is okay. The movie is shot without much ambition, but at least the director can shoot a master. The movie is 98 minutes long, and I admit, I was never bored. Robert Picardo makes a cameo at the end – that’s cool. Yeah, that’s about it. There’s not much for me to recommend here. The script and the characters are both subpar, and really, that’s the nuts and bolts of any movie. You don’t have that, you don’t have anything – and Confess, Fletch has too little of both.