Dec. 30, 2004 - 11:47 am

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Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

this was a movie suggestion that came in a while ago. i can't remember exactly what the person said about the film, but they thought i should watch it.

it's a Steve Martin/Carl Reiner film that is done in a comedic film noir style. it also features a lot of snippets of real film noir movies from the 1940s and 1950s like Suspicion (1941), The Lost Weekend (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and White Heat (1949) just to name a few. they work the clips into the Steve Martin story and he usually interacts with the characters that are being clipped from the original movie. it's sort of neat but usually not too funny.

the story of this film and the comedy of it are noticeably weak. i think they were focused on working out the logistics of fitting all of these scenes into the story and making it technologically work out - doing all of the split screen shots and superimpositions. it would be hard to make it work, but they did it. the problem is that during that process, they lost sight of creating an interesting and comedic tale. it had a lot of potential, but didn't come out as something worth remembering.