During my formative years, I can recall seeing the movie "Fletch" in the theater when it was released in 1985. I enjoyed it at the time and continued to find it amusing during repeated viewings in college and young adulthood. It probably would have been listed among my favorite comedies of all time.
Then a few years back, I was watching it yet again and noticed how poorly it had held up over time. I realized that the lines themselves were not all that funny and that it was my familiarity with them rather than any real comic appeal that had fueled my fond thoughts of the movie. It's always disappointing when something that you once enjoyed is finally revealed as wanting, but I didn't put any further thought into it.
Now, Reihan Salam explains Why Chevy Chase's Fletch is so abominably bad at Slate:
As a movie, Fletch is all but unwatchably bad. But as a cultural artifact, it is invaluable. Reagan had just been re-elected by a landslide when the film hit theaters in 1985, and Fletch reflects, in a strange and roundabout way, an era of wrenching liberal despair. While the enlightened bourgeoisie and their scruffy spawn were no longer running the country, they could at least laugh along with Chevy Chase as he poked fun at Reagan's America—the nouveau riche, the pig-headed cops, the Mormons.
Sometimes I think people go too far by trying to bring politics into everything, but a lot of what Salam notes about "Fletch" hits home:
Watching Fletch again, I experienced the shock of recognition: The film perfectly captures the rise of the ironically detached hipster sensibility. Chevy Chase, then at the height of both his career and comedic powers, plays an investigative reporter named Irwin Fletcher. Throughout the movie, he dons a seemingly endless series of "comical" disguises in the haphazard pursuit of a big scoop on the Los Angeles drug trade. And yet he always radiates the same genial contempt. Fletch is handsome, self-confident, and he certainly sounds affable. Listen closely, though, and you'll find that his pleasant demeanor masks the condescending jackass within.
It was a forerunner to much of what passes for comedy these days: smartass makes audience laugh and feel SMART themselves by making fun of people too uncool to "get it." All "Borat" did was take this formula for yucks to a more extreme level.
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