Not for the first time it appears that I watched a different film to the majority of those who posted comments here and found Peter Sellars funny when he is by a country mile the weakest link and gets by on a Wang and a prayer. As a young man Neil Simon o'd on Hollywood 'hard-case' fodder and it does tend to show in his work although in truth there are worse influences out there. Because Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple are still very much with us - at least on British television their send-ups, James Coco and Elsa Lanchester respectively will be the most recognizable followed closely by Peter Falk's Bogie/Sam Spade leaving Nick and Nora Charles (to say nothing of Asta) a bad nowhere yet William Powell and Myrna Loy's sophistication was light as a soufflé from which David Niven and Maggie Smith snatch a suet pudding effortlessly. Of Sellars' Charlie Chan the less said the better. Simon's screenplay is very much a scatter-gun spraying so many gags both verbal and visual that some sixty-to-seventy per cent find their target. Take away Peter Sellers and you'd have an almost perfectvmovie.
Review of Murder by Death
