Clue (1985)

There are films that feel built for a specific audience, and Clue (1985) is about as self-aware of that fact as any Hollywood production from the era. Based on the Hasbro board game known in the UK as Cluedo, the film takes the game's central premise, a murder mystery set in a grand mansion with a handful of suspects and a rotating cast of possible weapons, and blows it up into a feature-length farce. It was a somewhat unusual gamble for Paramount Pictures and their collaborators at Debra Hill Productions and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment: adapting a board game into a comedy thriller was not exactly a proven formula, and the production leaned heavily into the inherent silliness of the source material rather than playing things straight. The film even released with multiple different endings distributed to different cinemas, meaning audiences in different parts of the country might leave having seen a different culprit. It was a clever marketing quirk, though whether it translated into ticket sales is another matter. The film was considered something of a disappointment on initial release, pulling in modest numbers before finding considerably warmer reception on home video, where it gradually built the devoted following it holds today.

Jonathan Lynn, who would later direct My Cousin Vinny (1992), keeps the action largely confined to the mansion's rooms and corridors, leaning into the theatrical, almost stage-like quality of the material. The script, which Lynn co-wrote with John Landis, rattles along at a pace that rarely lets the comedy settle before the next revelation or pratfall arrives. The ensemble cast is the real centrepiece. Tim Curry, already well established as a performer willing to commit entirely to outsized material (as anyone who has seen his work in The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Muppet Treasure Island will know), anchors the film as Wadsworth the butler, delivering a performance that is polished but unremarkable in terms of restraint. He gives everything. Around him, Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, and Michael McKean each take their character archetypes, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White, Professor Plum, Mr. Green, and the rest, and push them as far as the material will allow. Kahn in particular brings a particular comic timing that was entirely her own. It is, by design, a broad, frenetic, and unapologetically silly piece of work, and for audiences who come to it on those terms, it tends to land well. Whether it lands for everyone, though, is a different question.

I don't really like the game to be honest. Watched this with my girlfriend who loves it. I didn't really like it at all. I didn't find it funny. It wasn't engaging. It was just not "my" type of movie I suppose.

And I think that is a perfectly fair place to land. There is a certain type of comedy that runs on chaos, rapid-fire plotting, and theatrical excess, and if that frequency is not yours, no amount of goodwill toward the cast is going to fix it. For me, the films I find myself returning to from this era of American comedy tend to have a bit more grounding to them, something to hold onto between the jokes. Clue, for all its energy, does not really offer that. If you are a Cluedo devotee or someone who came to this one early, I can entirely see why it means a lot. But if you came to it cold, as I did, it is easy to feel like you are watching the party rather than being at it. Some films are just not yours, and there is no shame in saying so.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1985  | Watched: 2025-05-17

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Trailer

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