Confess, Fletch
Directed by Greg Mottola
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

John Hamm in Confess, Fletch. Photo: Miramax

It has been ages since Fletch graced our screens, and it isn’t for Hollywood not trying: no wonder – it’s a bankable character, as this new instalment shows.

The Fletch franchise, marrying crime with comedy and farce, suffered from being part of the Harvey Weinstein scandal (it was owned by the Miramax stable) and the fact that Chevy Chase made the character his own meant the A-listers were for once somewhat camera-shy when it came to throwing a hat in the ring.

And we can be thankful for this, as John Hamm in the lead has managed to give us almost everything Chase’s Fletch offered, though perhaps a little less of the look to camera facial expressions that revealed so much while saying so little. Despite this, his Fletch is endearing, which is the key facet of what made Chase’s version so appealing.

Our story starts with the now-retired investigative reporter walking into a posh house in Boston to find a dead body on the sitting room floor. It’s an everyday type of occurrence for Fletch, and kickstarts a story of international art thieves, bribery, kidnapping and double crossing as he tries to untangle a mystery of a missing Picasso, a dead body and some unsavoury art types.

Fletch has flown to Boston from Italy, where he has been hanging out with his new girlfriend (Lorenza Izzo), to try and find stolen paintings owned by his beau’s father. The father has been kidnapped and the ransom is a Picasso – but the paintings cannot win the patriarch his freedom as they have been stolen. Fishy…

A walk-through cast includes Kyle MacLachlan as a techno-loving art dealer, a gold-digging Italian countess and hippie neighbour who all offer Fletch various distractions and jokes to help things along.

This is a happy-go-lucky comedy. It does not rely on low humour, but instead is full of gentle jibes and harmless ribbing. Hamm makes this all swim along with little fuss.

It may not quite match the Chase levels of quirky fan-ship – the original Fletch stories were seminal for a generation of cinema-goers, now into their 40s and 50s – but they’ve captured the vibe of the originals sufficiently to make this both a welcome bit of nostalgia for a much-loved character of 80s film, and hopefully open the world of Fletch up to a new audience.