Yikes! I understand we can’t always hold films from earlier eras to the social standards of the current moment, but even beyond the rampant offensiveness of Murder by Death, the fact that this whodunit spoof relies on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and disability for the vast majority of its jokes speaks to a paucity of comic imagination that’s timelessly disheartening. Written by Neil Simon and directed by Robert Moore, the movie gathers an assortment of detective archetypes—Peter Falk does a variation on Sam Spade; David Niven and Maggie Smith riff on Nick and Nora Charles; and Peter Sellers evokes, gulp, Charlie Chan—for a dinner party at the mansion of a mysterious criminologist (Truman Capote, giving a novice, sore-thumb performance that’s reminiscent of Paul Williams in Phantom of the Paradise). Alec Guinness is also on hand as the blind butler, whose silly name—Jamessir Bensonmum—provides some of the only legit laughs. (“Not Benson, mum. It’s Bensonmum.”) I also chuckled each time I heard the mansion’s doorbell, which is the sound of a woman screaming. But I think that’s about it.
(9/10/2024)
