Clue

Twenty-for-Seven #16 (Day6)
1985, d. Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny)

Clue was weirdly a very popular movie among people my age back in the 1980s.  It seemed to smack that 10-13 year-old group right in the face with its cheekiness, it's morbid humour and its overtly comedic sensibilities.  I know I watched it a few times in my youth, and likely on video with each of the alternate endings tacked on.  That alone was quite the marvel, providing a bit of outre-ness to a very mainstream, very commercial, very capitalistic offering.

I haven't watched Clue in likely 30 years, yet it was still remarkably familiar.  I didn't remember everything, but certain jokes I could tell were coming, certain scenes I was anticipating, and some quotes and happenings I was recalling as they happened.  It was a nostalgia trip rewatching it, to be sure.

The film has its devotees, a little cult of like-aged people to myself who hold it with very weird esteem.  And honestly, I get it.  By today's standards, it's a bit light on comedy, effects, set dressing, and such (it has very much the tellings of a debut picture), but even still it's a very entertaining movie (if honestly still a little bit confusing with it's rapid, running-around pacing) with a delightfully goofball cast.

I remember Entertainment Tonight segments marveling at the audacity of a film to be based on a board game in 1985.  It seemed an impossible thing to make a workable film out of something that had no pre-existing narrative.  How to make those names like Col. Mustard and Prof. Plum work in any believable way...?  How to incorporate all the aspects of the game and yet actually make a coherent story...?

The answer was quite simple in making it a comedy as well as a murder mystery.  Revel in the deaths, with each murder more hilarious than the last, and wrap it all up with one of the greatest gimmicks in cinema history (three different endings, dispersed to different theatres during its initial run).  It didn't make for the most successful film, as I think the general populace was still dubious (we didn't wind up seeing  slew of other board games immediately) but it struck a chord with a certain population of youth and comedy lovers.

As a murder mystery, it's pretty dodgy (being open ended enough to have multiple murderers revealed will do that) and as a comedy it's a bit slow, but mixed together and it's an entirely unique thing, a grand farce that's part Agatha Christie and part Benny Hill.

The cast is a great who's who of comedic acting talent from the era: Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Michael McKean, Leslie Ann Warren, and Madeline Kahn all putting in exceptionally game performances.  It holds up surprisingly well.  It's certainly an artifact of its time, but I think it would still delight youger viewers today.