Confess, Fletch

By Joanna Langfield

Movie capers are fun. Fletch, the mystery novel and film adaptation series, is fun. Happily, the newest spin on all of this, well that’s fun, too.

Jon Hamm slips perfectly into the white kicks of the retired investigative reporter who, in this chapter, may or may not have committed murder. Fletch keeps insisting to the Boston cops on the case all he really was doing was looking for the stolen art collection of a rich Italian man, the father of his new girlfriend, who now, it seems, has been kidnapped. It’s all, you know, complicated.

Hamm, along with writer/director Greg Mottola, knows to keep it light, keep a spring in the step while, every once in a while, owning up to some surprising moments of awareness. Fletch may be a lithe goofball, but he’s no fool. Except maybe for love. But let’s get back to the story. And there is a whole lot of it. We may be forgiven for tuning out some of the finer plot points because, after all, the lifeblood of this movie is not in the details. It’s in the remarkably game cast, led by supporting players (and I do mean play) Roy Wood, Jr., Ayden Mayeri, Kyle MacLachlan, Marcia Gay Harden and John Slattery. But the only one I want to get her own spinoff is Annie Mumulo, who is so hilariously perfect, she almost steals the whole thing. Can’t Fletch have his own dysfunctional partner in crime next time around? Because I’d happily be on board for that.