Fletch
Chevy Chase stars as investigative reporter Fletch who is hot on the trail of the next big story for his newspaper and goes undercover to find the truth.
Film making 20/25
Cinematography 15/25
Audio 15/25
Bonus Features 12/25
Total 62/100
Fletch is a 1985 film about investigative reporter Irwin Fletcher, Fletch to his friends and informants, starring Chevy Chase. Fletch is an investigative reporter who is currently working on the drug trafficking problem in Los Angeles that the police cannot seem to curtail.
Fletch goes undercover starting as a beach wanderer, new term for bum?, and tries to find out why the police cannot seem to stop the drug trafficking. He has chased down the drug problem to a beach and has befriended several smaller drug dealers on the beach but is sure the police are somehow in on the drug trafficking.
While staking out the beach a well dressed man, Alan Stanwyk played by Tim Matheson, approaches Fletch and asks to meet him at his house for a considerable sum of money. When Fletch goes to the Stanwyk’s house he asks Fletch to kill him on a specific day and time.
Fletch does some investigating and finds out the man is not what he seems and his wanting to be killed so he does not suffer a lingering death from cancer is a lie. Fletch does uncover the truth behind both the drug trafficking and the murder for hire by being the great sleuth he is using his immense repertoire of disguises.
Chevy Chase does a good job as Fletcher but could have done a little better with a few more emotional outbursts or some kind of heartfelt acting. His character is too non emotional and he does a very straight job in the film that feels a bit too dead pan, much like his work in Caddyshack.
The film is pretty good and well worth either owning or renting but the Blu-ray edition does add a little over the older DVD versions. The Blu-ray edition has a lot of current making of features in Making and Remembering Fletch, The Disguises and Favorite Fletch Moments.
The bonus features are modern add ons instead of stuff from the filming back in 1985 when the film was shot so is very nostalgic as well as timely. The two features are pretty good and a fun look back at the filming from cast and crew with a fast paced feature Favorite Fletch Moments as a quick peek at exactly what the title says.
The bonus content is worth a onetime look and an interesting peek at an older movie from cast and crew that makes a worthwhile experience that is entertaining. Other than the two looking back features there really is no other bonus content worth mentioning.
The Blu-ray edition of Fletch was not such a great transfer with some decent image quality and equally average audio quality. For some reason both image and audio did not move over to Blu-ray very well with grainy texture and images that have some pretty bland colors.
The film looks and sounds dated with okay but just better than average audio quality which is quite surprising with the 5.1 DTS-HD Master surround sound. The audio is 5.1 English DTS-HD surround sound but did not transfer well with very poor surround sound overall.
The audio is quite average, throughout the movie you could tell it did not transfer well but I just could not put my finger on why. It was just an overall lack of better quality and the little things that I have gotten used to in the better Blu-ray movies that was missing here.
Overall Fletch is a fun and worthwhile movie but may not be worth a purchase if you don’t like the oddball comedy of Chevy Chase such as he did in Caddyshack or on Saturday Night live. Fletch is one of those good old comedies that may be a worthwhile purchase in my opinion but maybe not on Blu-ray.