Get a Clue

I feel less and less motivated these days to go out and see a midnight screening of a movie. But some just won't be denied. So it was this past Saturday night, when I went to a local theater that was showing the fantastic comedy Clue. I'd never actually seen it in a theater before, with an audience -- an added extra for the whole experience. But regardless of venue, the movie is one of my favorites.

It's actually an unbelievably well written movie. It's a movie based on a board game -- a rather ludicrous idea. The first brilliant thing the writers, John Landis and Jonathan Lynn, did was to recognize this fact and embrace it to provide the tone for the movie. It is a ludicrous idea to base a movie on a board game... therefore, let it be a ludicrous movie, a farcical comedy.

But what's truly impressive is how many details of the board game are preserved in the film. The silly names of the characters are explained away as deliberately assigned aliases. All six of the weapons are introduced and used. All nine rooms are featured, with at least one significant scene set in each. The secret passages connecting rooms on the corners of the game board show up.

And then there are more subtle connections to the game, that probably never even occur to you when you're simply enjoying the movie and not thinking about it. The "silhouette on the basement wall" graphic that used to appear at the center of the board is recreated. The writers manage to craft a murder where you do have to question in what room the victim actually died. (How this fact could not be known in the board game was always the real mystery to me.) The climax shows the murder solver having to run to the rooms where they took place, and dragging the party he accuses along with him, all exactly as it works in the game. Then of course there are the multiple endings, a nod to the fact that the murder solution is different every time you play the game. In short, I think the only element of the game not represented is the fact that you have to roll a die to move.

But all of that just deepens my appreciation for Clue. What makes me love it in the first place is that it's damn funny. No joke falls flat. (And hearing the constant laughter in the theater audience only underscored that fact.) There's highbrow wordplay, lowbrow physical comedy, humor in styles from Three Stooges to Marx Brothers, prop humor, tweaking of mystery film conventions... "every part of the buffalo" is used.

And the cast! How could you possibly say enough about the cast, a who's who of brilliant comedians? As the opening credits rolled in that darkened theater, every name drew applause.

Eileen Brennan's Mrs. Peacock runs from outlandishly broad (her reaction to the possibility of having been poisoned) to wry and subtle (her response to being asked if she's afraid of a fate worse than death: "No, just death. Isn't that enough?").

Martin Mull's Colonel Mustard is a perfect buffoon. He's the butt of most of the great "you're so stupid" jokes in the film, and one-half of a brilliant "who's on first?" like exchange in the second act.

Christopher Lloyd played Professor Plum here in the same year he was Doc Brown in Back to the Future; 1985 was a banner year for the man. Here, he's a hilarious lech who tosses off some of the most subtle one-liners in the movie ("It's frightened." "Shucks.") for some of the biggest laughs.

Michael McKean takes the stereotype that could have been Mr. Green and makes it funny throughout. Jokes at his expense that could have come off mean-spirited are hilarious instead. And he nails every one of the many sight gags given to his accident-prone character.

Lesley Ann Warren is great as Miss Scarlet. Her character is probably the "straightest" part in the film, and she conveys both streetwise and seductive in a way that would be credible even in a dramatic movie. Then she turns around in the same scene and gets a huge laugh with lines like "dinner wasn't that bad" or "who are you, Perry Mason?"

Tim Curry is at his best as Wadsworth the butler. He gets some of the biggest laughs throughout the movie, and of course wraps up the film with his dizzying, rapid-fire reveal of murder solution. (Set to music which might just be the single film score I wish most would be released on CD -- though I know it never will be.)

And finally, there's Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White. I swear I felt a little about humanity as a whole sitting in that theater, realizing that there are other people in the world who think she was as funny and gifted as I do. As skilled as all these other actors are, even they can't keep pace with her. She steals every scene she's in. She does it with dialogue. (Her "flames" monologue was recited aloud in perfect unison by half the audience, and received raucous applause at its conclusion.) She even does it without dialogue. (Her tiny but outrageous reactions to Wadsworth's tearful story of his wife's death had the audience in stitches, and me struggling to breathe even though I've seen the movie countless times before.)

I'm not saying you have to think Clue is the greatest comedy ever made. But if it doesn't make you laugh out loud when you watch it, I'm not sure I want to know you.

When I heard stories about how Monopoly and Battleship were both recently optioned for possible movies, it gave me a moment's pause. Yes, the idea sounds phenomenally stupid. But so did the idea for Clue, and it was brilliant. Yes, they almost certainly will suck (if they even ever get made).

But maybe... just maybe... the result will be a grade A movie like Clue.