Metacritic reviews

Funny and inventive vehicle for Chevy Chase's hapless and genuinely funny comic creation.

Reprising the role, Chevy Chase is reliably irreverent as the tangle-footed, many-monikered reporter.

Whether the lines are funny, tasteless or not-so-funny, Chase keeps popping 'em; whether the scenes are from "48 HRS." or "Beverly Hills Cop," screenwriter Leon Capetanos keeps photocopying them; and director Michael Ritchie (who also directed "Fletch") makes everything move along to a frenetic zydeco soundtrack. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself laughing at something. Unless you're dead, too.

Film’s saving grace is its scathing satirical sketches of fictional televangelist preacher Jimmy Lee Farnsworth.

Fletch Lives is the ultimate comedy of condescension, a movie with a hero whose every other line of dialogue is a snide wisecrack directed at a fool. In this meager sequel, as in its popular predecessor, Chevy Chase demolishes every easy target in sight with a quip of the tongue. Some of the lines are funny, but after a while you just want to smack him.

Chase delivers a one-note performance, consisting mainly of predictable comebacks and salacious leers, while the characters who become the targets of his witty rejoinders are weak and silly stereotypes. FLETCH LIVES is a custom-built Chevy Chase vehicle throughout; the other performers are only along for the ride.

When Chase bothers to actually play a character, he can be very effective (his "Funny Farm" was one of the best comedies of 1988). But sometimes he seems to be covering himself, playing detached so that nobody can blame him if the comedy doesn't work. In this film he seems to have no emotions at all; consider the scene where he discovers that the woman he made love with has died during the night.

It`s patently impossible to maintain the realism required for suspense in such a strained and silly context, though that doesn`t stop Ritchie from trying.

Fletch Lives looks less like ''Fletch 2,'' which it is, numerically speaking, than ''Fletch 7,'' the bitter end of a worn-out series.

The humour throughout is alternately mindless, sexist, racist, and homophobic, and would probably offend if you managed to stay awake.