Movie Review: Jon Hamm Miscast in 'Confess, Fletch'

Confess, Fletch (2022)

Directed by Greg Mottola

Written by Greg Mottola, Zev Borow

Starring Jon Hamm, Marcia Gay Harden, John Slattery, Annie Mumolo, Kyle MacLachlan

Release Date September 16th, 2022

Confess, Fletch is a reboot of an 80s franchise that rarely gets discussed these days. That’s perhaps the fault of its legendarily jerky star Chevy Chase. Chase has become a cranky old geezer, as shown by his behind the scenes stories from his time working on the series Community and the ugly end of that run via his feud with showrunner Dan Harmon. It’s not unreasonable to assume that people would remember Fletch and Fletch Lives far more fondly if Chase were a beloved and respected comedy veteran and not as a guy people don’t enjoy working with.

Nevertheless, Chase’s shadow does loom large over the attempt to reboot the franchise. For years, the project has been cursed by studio magnates balking at creative choices and numerous directors and actors falling in and out of love with the project. The last I had heard of Fletch was all the way back in 2003 when Kevin Smith was desperately trying to make a Fletch movie starring his pal Jason Lee as Fletch. That movie never happened as executives felt that Lee wasn’t a big enough star for the role. So, imagine my surprise when I received an email inviting me to watch Confess, Fletch, a newly completed reboot of the franchise.

Mad Men star Jon Hamm takes up the role of the former investigative journalist turned author, Irwin M. ‘Fletch’ Fletcher in Confess, Fletch. We meet the new Fletch as he has arrived at a fancy home in Boston. It’s not Fletch’s house, he’s just staying there at the behest of his rich, Italian girlfriend, Angela (Lorenza Izzo). However, someone other than Angela must have known he was coming because someone left Fletch an unfortunate gift: a dead woman in the living room.

Taking the dead woman in the living room in stride, Fletch nonchalantly calls the non-emergency line for the local Police. When asked why he did not call 911 Fletch rightly points out that the emergency part of this story is pretty much over. His flippancy, however, is noted by investigators who immediately see Fletch as a suspect. Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri play the detectives on the case and while they settle on Fletch as the culprit, Fletch himself must find a way to prove he’s just an innocent bystander. That means investigating the case himself and calling in some favors from his former boss, a newspaper editor, played by Jon Hamm’s old Mad Men pal, John Slattery.

That’s not Fletch’s only case however as he came to Boston to try and locate some stolen paintings. Exposition tells us that Angela’s father, a Baron or some such other kind of royalty, has been kidnapped. The kidnappers have made only one ransom demand, a painting by Pablo Picasso worth millions of dollars. The kidnappers believe that the old man has the painting but the painting has apparently been missing from the Baron’s collection for some time. Fletch has been tasked with finding the painting and rescuing the Baron.

Naturally, these plots are related with the murder intended to frame Fletch and prevent him getting the painting back and prevent him from rescuing the Baron. A rather brilliant and bizarre Kyle MacLachlan is the lynchpin of this plot but that’s not what makes his performance easily the most entertaining thing about Confess, Fletch. MacLachlan leans into his weird, creepy persona in a way that is charming, funny and deeply weird in a way that only Kyle McLachlan can be. This role however, is very strange for another reason as the character has so little screen time. For a character directly at the heart of the plot, it’s odd for him to be mostly invisible throughout the movie.

Though he’s memorable, MacLachlan’s character is barely there in a plot stuffed with characters. Confess, Fletch makes room for far too many peripheral characters including a pair of street artists, a drug addicted rich friend of Fletch’s girlfriend, and Marcia Gay Harden hammily carrying an Italian accent as the Baron’s wife, and a suspect in the Baron’s disappearance. The strangest casting inclusion however, is the brilliant comedian Eugene Mirman. The Bob’s Burgers star and beloved alt-comedian is cast as a security guard at a yacht club who gets far too much screen time for someone who never shares the screen with Fletch. Yes, somehow, Mirman’s character is never seen with Jon Hamm’s Fletch despite having as much screen time as Kyle McLachlan’s character.

It’s bizarre choices like the casting and use of someone as brilliant as Eugene Mirman that makes Confess, Fletch feel sloppy and slipshod. Director Greg Mottola doesn’t seem to have a strong grasp of the tone he’s seeking for the movie. It’s as if he were directing Chevy Chase and not Jon Hamm, two actors of very different energies and talents. Where Chase seems like the kind of guy to nonchalantly disregard a dead body for the purpose of a gag, Hamm appears strained trying to be funny about this plot point.

Where Chase could pull off being an absolutely massive jerk to everyone, Hamm seems shy and a little embarrassed about being rude to people. That’s not to say that I liked Chase’s Fletch, those films have NOT aged well. Rather, it’s just that Chase is a trained funnyman who can sense where the joke of a scene is. Hamm meanwhile, is the kind of actor who can be funny under the right circumstances. Take for example his terrific work on Tina Fey’s 30 Rock. Under the careful writing and direction of Fey and the 30 Rock team, Hamm is hilariously over the top funny.

Sadly, under the much looser direction of Greg Mottola, Hamm flounders. He’s not the kind of actor who can find the joke. Chase, with his background in improv and SNL knows to go looking for something funny, Hamm needs direction to where the joke is and he doesn’t appear to get much of that in Confess, Fletch. The film isn’t unfunny, there are amusing scenes in Confess, Fletch but not nearly enough of them.

Before I watched Confess, Fletch, I wondered why I hadn’t heard that a Fletch movie had even been in production. After watching it, I can see why the movie is getting a streaming rental funeral. Confess, Fletch is a mostly mediocre effort at nostalgia that wastes a strong cast by overloading the plot with nonsense and failing to include enough jokes. Jon Hamm is unfortunately miscast as a slick, quick on his feet charmer. The role of Fletch needed a dynamic comic presence and though Hamm is a great actor under the right circumstances, he’s not up to the challenge of Confess, Fletch.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews on my archive blog at SeanattheMovies.Blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean and follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. You can also hear me talk about movies like Confess, Fletch on the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcasting app. If you’ve enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my work here on Vocal. You can also support my writing by making a monthly pledge or a one time tip below.