The flops of Chevy Chase part 3: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

So here we are with the last look at where Chevy Chase’s career went off the rails and actually it’s probably the most interesting of the three films I’ve looked at. As well as being a rare semi-serious role for Chase it’s also directed John Carpenter, who had taken a long break from filmmaking after the commercial disappointments of Prince of Darkness and They Live. The film was very much a passion project for Chase, who had secured the rights to the book by H.F. Saint after it was published in 1987 and he clearly had a strong vision for the film.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man sees Chase play Nick Halloway, a stock analyst who gets caught in an explosion at a scientific research building that renders him completely invisible. CIA Agent David Jenkins (Sam Neill) is tasked with tracking him down with a view to turning him into the ultimate assassin. However Nick wants nothing to be left alone so he enlists the help of Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), a woman he was beginning a relationship with just prior to the accident, to help him escape to safety.

As I said this was very much Chase’s vanity project. The script was originally written much more as a comedy, with Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) set to direct but Chase insisted on it being a more serious film so he brought in John Carpenter, who had little enthusiasm but was happy to do it as a “work-for-hire”. After the film was released he explained he hadn’t titled it “John Carpenter’s” as he did his other movies because he knew Warner Brothers was more “in the business of making audience-friendly, non-challenging movies.” 

It’s a shame that Carpenter dismisses the film so much because there’s actually a lot to enjoy about it. Firstly, the special effects, though not spectacular, show a lot of creative thinking. The approach of having Chase mostly be seen by the audience but invisible to everyone else on screen is a very clever idea and adds to the comedy of situations. Seeing assault teams break into his apartment while he just walks past them is very entertaining. 

The film has some very clever ideas about the realities of being invisible. For instance Chase can’t see him own hands so he finds it hard to eat food. He also can’t eat otherwise people will just see the floating contents of his stomach. And there’s a fantastic bit where he needs to travel so he punches a drunk guy and gets him to flag down a taxi. Also, Sam Neill is highly entertaining as the bad guy. He brings some of the same menace he showed in Dead Calm to the role of Jenkins. It’s a shame he and Chase don’t get more scenes together because they make great adversaries. There’s a particularly tense scene where he traps Chase in his own office that shows the potential of what a more serious take on the subject matter could have achieved.

Despite it’s good points the film does have couple of faults. One of them is that the majority of it all is told in flashback with Chase narrating his adventures. I’ve got to say rarely like films that do this, it kind of kills the excitement and suspense. Also, as much as I enjoy the film I do recognise that it’s quite low-key. What the film really needed was someone like Steven Spielberg to bring out the sense of wonder and boost the film’s set pieces. But then again maybe what I like about the film is that it doesn't go down the traditional route. Chase doesn't go on an exciting globe trotting adventure. He just hides out in a friend's holiday home and eats junk food.

Carpenter’s direction is solid but it’s a shame his heart isn’t in it. There’s some nice homages to James Whales’ original The Invisible Man film from 1933. And he’s clearly enjoying aping Hitchcock’s thrillers such as North By Northwest and The 39 Steps. If I’m honest though I love both him and Chase they shouldn’t have been involved in the same project. Their sensibilities are too different. Doing this film was a mistake for Carpenter, he was already disillusioned by working for major studios after Big Trouble in Little China and he should have come back to Hollywood with a more personal project.

And so to Chase, the star. He perhaps wasn’t the right choice for the role but I still enjoy what he did with it. As you watch the film you can’t help but wonder if the film would have been better if it committed to either be a straight thriller or straight comedy. The mix of the two is uneven at times. I think audience’s expectations of Chase put them off the film when it was originally released. He’d spent the entire previous decade playing nothing but comedies and he’d pigeon-holed himself. No one wanted to see him in something that wasn’t a straight forward comedy.

He was trying to broaden his acting range but he’d left it too late. Chase should have stretched his wings and tried something like this earlier in his career rather than relying on comedies for the whole previous decade. Several other 80s comedy actors had a similar dilemma in the early 90s. Martin Short, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin. Of all of them only Bill Murray managed to break free and start a successful second career as a serio-comic actor (for which he mostly owes Wes Anderson).

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is a pretty fun flick that didn’t deserve to be such a flop. It earned only half it’s budget back and was really the last major film to be released by Chase. The following year he tried to start a chat show that was a huge ratings flop. And in 1994 he acted in Cops and Robbersons, a particularly poor comedy film by Michael Ritchie.

For the next decade and a half he had a very dry run. It was only when he was cast in the TV show Community in 2009 that he started to make something of a comeback. It remains to be seen where his career will go from here. Rumours are that he’ll likely come back for a reboot of the Vacation series which would be a nice way to cap his career I think.

The flops of Chevy Chase part 2: Nothing But Trouble (1991)

Okay, strap yourself in and prepare for the worst because this is going to get messy. Ordinarily on this site I only review films that I love or at the very least like but this one was a true patience tester and without doubt one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen. I can only guess that Chevy Chase took the lead role as a favour to Dan Aykroyd, he can't possibly have read the script and agreed to it (unless he was desperate for cash). Nothing But Trouble was the brain child of Dan Aykroyd (who directs and plays two roles) and his brother Peter. Now we all know Aykroyd is a little bit of an oddball character. He's a devout spiritualist and seems to genuinely believe in a lot of supernatural phenomena. This served him very well when writing the Ghostbusters movies but here he unleashes a torrent of such bizarre, ugly characters and storylines that at times I felt physical ill.

The film sees Chase play Chris Thorne, a financial advisor who takes a road trip with two of his wealthy clients and his neighbor Diane (Demi Moore). Aiming to get to Atlantic City as fast as possible they take a short cut through an eerie ghost town called Valkenvania. However, they accidentally go over the speed limit and the local sheriff tries to flag them down but stupidly they attempt to out run him. This only makes matters worse and eventually they are all arrested and taken to the town's Judge (Dan Aykroyd under a ton of old man make-up) where they discover that they won't be able to just "pay a fine and leave". The judge and his in-bred family of weirdos have a far stricter sense of justice, sending most lawbreakers straight to a meat grinder called Mr Bonestripper! So the group split up and try to escape the town by any means but it's far harder than it looks.

I think the problem with this film is that any comedy elements seemed to have been added in at a very late stage in the film development. Bar a few ad libs from Chase and some of the grotesque make-up work there's very little humour in the story. According to Aykroyd the idea for the film came from a personal experience from 1978 where he was pulled over for speeding in a hick town and forced to plead in front of an elderly judge. Here he's adapted the story writ large. The town is literally like the stuff of nightmares decorated with broken machinery and human bones. In actual fact Valkenvania is based on a real life ghost town called Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an underground coal fire has warped the landscape and ousted its townfolk since the fire first sparked in the 1960s. I guess you could argue that this adds up to a rich back story but unfortunately Aykroyd seems content to just show us this stuff, not actual use any of it to tell an interesting story. The whole plot basically boils down to Chase and Moore get pulled over, see the judge, they escape and come back later with the state police. That's it. There's no revelations or twists or character arcs or anything.

None of the actors apart from Aykroyd seem to really be very invested in their characters. John Candy plays the role of police sheriff as a nice ordinary guy which jars with the rest of the townsfolk. He also gets to play another role in drag as Eldona, the judge's mute daughter which doesn't work either. Chase just looks kind of confused throughout the entire running time. He tries a couple of his usual wiseass comebacks now and then (some which seem to have been messily added in post) but the scenario is so odd he can't make any laughs happen. There's also meant to be a burgeoning romance between him and Moore but the two have very little chemistry and their kiss at the end seems very weird given their age gap. Another couple of actors who I haven't gone into much detail yet is Taylor Negron and Bertila Damas who play Chase's wealthy Brazilian clients. I honestly can't see any point of these characters, they escape early on and manage to convince Candy to come with them and that's the extent of their subplot. It's baffling to include two characters so prominently and then give them absolutely nothing to do. Also Negron overplays his role was a screeching effeminate voice that will make you reach straight for the mute button.

And so to Aykroyd. What can I say? He clearly loves acting under lathers of make-up. It's obviously freeing for an actor but as Eddie Murphy will tell you, it doesn't make your film any funnier. The Judge is a truly oddball creation and clearly Aykroyd thought the more grotesque he made him the funnier it would be. So he ends up giving him not only a prosthetic leg but also a prosthetic nose - which is shaped like a penis if you look close (on second thought, don't bother). Aykroyd other role is Bobo, an enormously fat man child in a diaper who along with his twin brother L'il Debbull tries to help Moore escape. Once again I cannot begin to fathom what Aykroyd was thinking by included these mentally retarded caricatures. Were we supposed to laugh at them?

The film basically veers all over the place and one of the most bizarre subplots (which basically acts as a time filler) is when a group of black rappers are also pulled over and brought before the judge. I guess you're meant to think that this old white judge will no doubt convict them straight away but they decide to launch into a four minute rap which culminates with the Judge joining in on his organ. Now I know Aykroyd likes his music by why the hell was there a musical interlude in this of all films? Also, one of rappers faces will be very familiar because... it's the late Tupac Shakur! 

Okay, I think I've talked enough about this film. It's one long, painful trainwreck and Chase got 'nothing but trouble' for taking it on. His comedic persona is based around being a cocky wiseass outsider who infuriates any person in authority (see Caddyshack). But here all the control is put in the Judge's hands. Aykroyd essentially got all his actors friends, Chase and Candy but failed to give them the roles they excel at. Candy is great at playing a lovable slobs so why put him in drag? This isn't the first time Aykroyd has done this. He also made Neighbors in the early 80s, a similarly dark and humorless movie that wasted John Belushi. Anyway, I guess in some ways, you've got to applaud Chase for trying something new. It's just shame that he picked this movie. 

Next time: We conclude our brief look at Chase's career with Memoirs of an Invisible Man.

Bonus fun fact: There's actually a band from Glasgow (now sadly defunct) called Dananananaykroyd.

Second bonus fun fact: Dan Aykroyd owns and runs a company that sells vodka in bottles that are shaped like Crystal Skulls! Check it out.

The flops of Chevy Chase part 1: Fletch Lives (1989)

I guess a lot of people would question the wisdom of reviewing any of Chevy Chase's movies not least some of his flops but I've always liked him as an actor ever since I was a kid. Throughout most of the 80s he was almost bullet proof, scoring several commercial hit films from Caddyshack to Vacation to Spies Like Us. Though it probably wasn't his highest grossing film, 1985's Fletch was definitely the one role that perfectly chimed with his default laconic comedy persona. Even Chase admits it was his favourite role of his entire career in his biography 'I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not'. I was always quite baffled as a kid as to why he stopped acting in big movies so I'm going to examining three films that marked the end of his professional career.

The sequel sees I.M. Fletcher still writing his newspaper column, getting harassed by his boss but before he can take on another undercover assignment he learns that his aunt has died and he's inherited her mansion in Louisiana. Thinking the house must be worth loads he quits his job and flies over to check it out. However rather than being some stately mansion it's a rundown, woodworm infested wreck. After some quick flirting with his aunt's lawyer, Fletch winds up bedding her but waking up the next morning he discovers she's dead. Someone is clearly trying to frame him but who? Is it his aunt's black caretaker, the local television evangelist or any one of the oddball inhabitants of the nearby town? And just what is it that makes his mansion so valuable to them all?

Fletch is a fantastic character opportunity. He's an investigator but he doesn't carry a gun so he's forced to talk his way in and out of situations and Chase makes a natural fit for this character. He excels at witty one liners and comebacks. Sadly, this film doesn't have as great a script as the first entry. The first film (based on Gregory McDonald's 1974 book) also had a fantastic mystery hook - an undercover journalist gets hired by a businessman to murder himself! The idea of someone inheriting a house from a forgotten relative just sounds like some bad mystery cliche. I'm still a little baffled that they didn't try adapting any of McDonald's ten superior Fletch novels. I can only guess they wanted to structure it for more around comedy moments for Chase - figuring that he, not McDonald, made the first film a hit.

That's not to say that the comedy bits aren't good. There's a fantastic bit where he uses a disguise to get onto the evangelist's tv show and begins faith healing people by slapping them with a bible. And there's also an inspired dream sequence where Fletch imagines living in his Southern mansion and everyone bursts into 'Zipper-dee-doo-dah' from Disney's Song of the South - complete with animated birds. What's missing is a decent mystery story running underneath. The writer Leon Capetanos (who also wrote Down and Out in Beverly Hills) doesn't seem to understand that a mystery is more than just setting up red herring after red herring and then revealing everything at the end. Too much emphasis seems to have been played on sticking in needless disguises which are clearly designed to be hilarious but mostly fall flat.

Another thing that probably didn't help the film is that the plot is somewhat similar to Funny Farm - a film where Chase played a writer who moves out to a country and makes enemies with the local townsfolk that came out one year earlier in 1988. I think one of Chase's weaknesses is that he didn't want to branch out with his roles. Clearly by the late 80s Chase had a choice to make, he'd had a good run for nearly a decade. He could either stick with the same wiseass antics or evolve into new roles. It's telling that in 1989 he made the decision to make not one but two sequels, this and Christmas Vacation. And the previous year he'd also did the laughter-free Caddyshack 2. Obviously Chase didn't want to evolve or if you want to be generous, maybe his management didn't want him to evolve. It's shame because I think he could have had a decent second career along the lines of his arch rival Bill Murray.

Fletch Lives isn't a great film but it's a decent watch and the jokes are pretty good. It's just nowhere near as classic as the original. Chase still gives the role a good shot but he's hampered by the weak script. Michael Ritchie's direction is decent. He also directed the original film and was the one who let Chase ad-lib a lot of his lines. I think if anyone can take anything away from this movie it's that you can't make a film just on ad-libs, comebacks and funny disguises. You need some meat on the bones. There's probably some metaphor about the movie trying to disguise it's lack of substance but I can't quite piece it together.

Next time: Dan Aykroyd drags Chase even further down in Nothing But Trouble