REVIEW: ‘Confess, Fletch’ Good Mystery, Better Humor

Whodunnits have been making a comeback since Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and in this new landscape it’s only fitting that the long problemed reboot of Fletch, the 1985 film staring Chevy Chase based on the novel by Gregory McDonald – although a reboot may not be the right word. Hollywood has been trying to make a new Fletch film for over a decade and while Zach Braff, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, and Joshua Jackson were all once assigned to one of the many Fletch reboots, it’s Jon Hamm who brings the smart, snarky, and indifferent journalist turned-sort-of private eye in Confess, Fletch. And damn, Hamm is comedic gold.

Confess Fletch is directed by Greg Mottola, written by Motolla and Zev Borow, and stars Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Marcia Gay Harden, Lorenza Izzo, John Slattery, Ayden Mayeri, and Kyle MacLachlan.  In Confess Fletch, Jon Hamm stars as the roguishly charming and endlessly troublesome Fletch. When he returns home from a business trip that was also a pleasure trip in Italy he finds himself in a townhouse with a dead body. While we know that Fletch just showed up, the scene is perfectly staged to implicate him as the murderer, landing him as the prime suspect in a murder case.

Although he is really just trying to search for a stolen art collection that belongs to his clients in Rome, he winds up having to clear his name. But every move he makes only deepens his implications in the murder. Despite that, he tries to find out which of the long list of suspects is the culprit—from the eccentric art dealer and a missing playboy to a crazy neighbor and his Italian girlfriend.

By and large, I kind of forgot that Confess Fletch was a whodunnit and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The characters in this film, particularly Hamm as Fletch as so endearing, annoying, and consuming that I just wanted more of each of them. Now, that doesn’t mean that the mystery isn’t great, because it is, but the smart ways that such a large cast of characters is worked into the film is something that needs to be commended.

Filled with cameos and even a Mad Men reunion, Confess Fletch never feels like it’s overstuffed, in fact, each and every cameo adds a new element of comedy that rounds out a film that embraces dark comedy, physical gags, and satire that skewers rich people in every way possible. With Hamm’s deadpan delivery, every piece of this comedy of errors absolutely works. The jokes range from low-hanging fruit to commentary with Fletch’s idiosyncracies like taking off his shoes everywhere paving the way for a lot of fun. In fact, the whodunnit of it all is messy and disorganized and that’s what makes it all extremely fun to watch.

Confess Fletch is a lot of fun, effortlessly funny, and let’s be real Jon Hamm needs more comedic roles. If you’re looking for a movie to laugh with and at this one is for you. Similarly, if you’re hard up for a whodunnit, this is, well, also for you. Much more than I expected, Confess Fletch shows that the right project, with the right people, even after years of production hell can finally bring a concept to fruition even great than when it was originally imagined. Give me Fletch 2 please.

Confess Fletch is in theaters and VOD on September 16, 2022.