Foul Play (1978)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I've always loved this movie. I remember when I saw it in the theater. I remember the audience exploding with laughter. The entire cast hits the ball out of the park. Very exciting and wildly funny. Great stuff.

Foul Play is written and directed by Colin Higgins. It stars Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase, Burgess Meredith, Rachel Roberts, Dudley Moore and Brian Dennehy. Music is by Charles Fox and cinematography by David M. Walsh.San Francisco librarian Gloria Mundy (Hawn) inadvertently gets embroiled with mobsters who are out to assassinate The Pope. Hooking up with cheeky copper Tony Carlson (Chase), she hopes to stay alive long enough to find out why people are trying to kill her!Comedy thrillers are tough to get right, you gotta make people laugh and also grip them with drama, thankfully Colin Higgins gets it right in this delightful late 1970s production. He kind of plays safe by literally throwing many of the conventions of the genres into the mix, with weird villains, an odd couple (hello romance), pratfalls, near misses, McGuffin, bonkers situations (both dicey and funny) and etc etc. Boosted by a damn fine cast (Hawn and Chase are fun, charming and sexy together, while the supports excel), some superb Frisco scenery and a toe tapping 70s soundtrack, it rounds out as a breezy effort across the board. Where else you going to see Burgess Meredith and Rachel Roberts in a martial arts smack down? 7/10

FOLLOWING THE INDIVIDUAL career successes of both co-stars, Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, the paring of the two in this crime drama send up seemed to be a boffo idea and In$tant Box Office $ucce$$.AS WE RECALL, it did have a certain degree of acceptance; but did not set any record at the turnstiles. Do they have them at movie houses anymore? Critical review also was less than enthusiastic. But then, when we talk of Film Critics, we think of what was said about Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. That being: "Nobody liked them but the Piublic." OUR MAIN BEEF with this movie is that much of its promotional ads on the TV networks showed Chevy Chase doing some of those falls that made him so well known as a Charter Member of NBC'S Saturday NIGHT.WHICH BRINGS UP the curious coincidental occurrence that both Chevy and Goldie made their names via the network comedy show. In the case of Miss Hawn it was ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH IN, nearly a decade before the debut of Saturday NIGHT.SO, AS SILLY as it sounds, we took our kids to see it with us and were just a trifle surprised to see how many violent situations were so forcefully portrayed. But then, as we didn't understand then, it was both a spoof of and an homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.ONE OTHER ASPECT of this movie that we want to make, before signing off, is its use of the Pope, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church at the center of its plot. This would make Writer/Director Colin Higgins an "ahead of his time" pioneer; for this predated both Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER: Part III and Ron Howard's THE DA VINCI CODE by some years.

Colin Higgens wrote and directed this comedy/thriller clearly inspired by director Alfred Hitchcock. Goldie Hawn stars as a lonely young woman who gets mixed up in espionage and murder after a man she was seeing dies, and leaves a microfilm with her which some crooks want, and will do anything to obtain. Chevy Chase plays a San Francisco detective who meets her in his investigation, and is immediately attracted, and they must team up to stop a sinister assassination plan involving the Pope. Burgess Meredith costars as a wacky neighbor of Goldie's, as does Dudley Moore as a love interest. Though a hit at the time, this film goes on too long, becoming increasingly ridiculous.