Clue, the movie where if you don't like the ending don't despair because we've got two more endings you can try and maybe you'll like one of those better. An interesting gimmick. Sadly, that gimmick is about the only interesting thing the movie has to offer. When you're making a movie out of a board game you can't expect to produce a cinema classic. All you're looking to do is make a movie that's fun. And this movie just isn't fun enough. The performers have a good go at it, most notably a deliriously over the top Tim Curry, but the material lets them down. Jokes fall flat, the movie drags and by the end you really don't care who did it. And finding out who did it is the whole point of the movie so that's a problem.
The movie sets itself up the way anyone who's ever played the game knows it would. All the famous characters are brought together in a secluded mansion. Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard. Somebody ends up lying dead on the floor. Who did it? And where? And with what? Well the where part is no great mystery. Or is it? There may be surprises to come. Anyhow our six suspects must figure out which of them is the killer. They are assisted by the butler Wadsworth, who serves as a sort of master of ceremonies for the bizarre evening, and the French maid Yvette. Along the way more bodies pile up. Attempted jokes pile up too but so many of them miss the mark. The comedy falls flat and the movie does too. None of the six suspects really stands out. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't want to point your suspicions in any one direction. But the effect is that bland characters make a bland movie. Michael McKean's Mr. Green and Madeline Kahn's Mrs. White are particularly dull. No fault of the performers, they really have nothing to work with. Even Christopher Lloyd, playing Professor Plum, is rather dry and boring. If you can make Christopher Lloyd boring you've really done something. Not something good though. Lesley Ann Warren does make a ravishing Miss Scarlett, always my prime suspect when I played the game. But she's upstaged in the va-va-va-voom department by Colleen Camp's wonderfully bouncy Yvette. Martin Mull makes no real impression as Colonel Mustard. Eileen Brennan's Mrs. Peacock does have some personality but she's more annoying than anything else. It's really left to Curry, playing Wadsworth, to inject some life into the movie. And he tries. Boy does he try, never more so than near the end with his madcap recap of events. But game as Curry is he can't perform a total salvage job on this largely disappointing movie. It's a whodunit where the answer is "who cares?"
The movie sets itself up the way anyone who's ever played the game knows it would. All the famous characters are brought together in a secluded mansion. Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard. Somebody ends up lying dead on the floor. Who did it? And where? And with what? Well the where part is no great mystery. Or is it? There may be surprises to come. Anyhow our six suspects must figure out which of them is the killer. They are assisted by the butler Wadsworth, who serves as a sort of master of ceremonies for the bizarre evening, and the French maid Yvette. Along the way more bodies pile up. Attempted jokes pile up too but so many of them miss the mark. The comedy falls flat and the movie does too. None of the six suspects really stands out. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't want to point your suspicions in any one direction. But the effect is that bland characters make a bland movie. Michael McKean's Mr. Green and Madeline Kahn's Mrs. White are particularly dull. No fault of the performers, they really have nothing to work with. Even Christopher Lloyd, playing Professor Plum, is rather dry and boring. If you can make Christopher Lloyd boring you've really done something. Not something good though. Lesley Ann Warren does make a ravishing Miss Scarlett, always my prime suspect when I played the game. But she's upstaged in the va-va-va-voom department by Colleen Camp's wonderfully bouncy Yvette. Martin Mull makes no real impression as Colonel Mustard. Eileen Brennan's Mrs. Peacock does have some personality but she's more annoying than anything else. It's really left to Curry, playing Wadsworth, to inject some life into the movie. And he tries. Boy does he try, never more so than near the end with his madcap recap of events. But game as Curry is he can't perform a total salvage job on this largely disappointing movie. It's a whodunit where the answer is "who cares?"