Chevy's Chase

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

FOUL PLAY

Directed and Written by Colin Higgins

One would not call it an auspicious motion picture debut. Just twice in the course of this infinite movie--a comedy-mystery into which someone forgot to put the comedy--does Chevy Chase get to do his famous impersonation of a klutz. One time he knocks over some glassware while attempting to project a suave image for Goldie Hawn; another time he falls off a gangplank into a river just after warning Hawn that it is slippery. At no other point is he given anything even remotely funny to say or do. It is hard to remember when a talented comic had fewer moments of risibility. He should thank his genes for the natural ease and charm he has to fall back upon. They allow him to sink bemusedly into the scenery without recourse to the desperation moves a lesser man might try. As a result Chase will doubtless live to fight for a life upon the silver screen at least one more day.

The caper he is entangled in, playing a detective, is about a group of antireligious fanatics who plan to assassinate the Pope during a visit to San Francisco. Hawn becomes the unwitting recipient of information about their plot when she gives a lift to an undercover cop. As the conventions of this sort of movie demand, Hawn has a hard time getting anyone to believe that 1) she is in danger and 2) something big is going on. Finally, of course, unavoidable evidence develops, and we cut to the chase. Alas, Director Colin Higgins has no higher skill in staging action than he does in inventing original comic situations. The most he can manage is some vulgar shock effects and a few Hitchcock ripoffs.

In a dispiriting film, the saddest moments belong to Dudley Moore, who plays a frustrated sex fiend whom Hawn keeps coming across. He is desperate for laughs, and Higgins, is frantic to provide them, but to no--or at least embarrassing avail. Higgins was the author of the popular Silver Streak; if you didn't realize it then, you will surely now understand how great was his debt to resourceful Richard Pryor for saving that similarly noisy and tasteless venture. Higgins should not make a move without him.

-- Richard Schickel

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