There aren't many movies based on board games. Somehow, Monopoly:The Motion Picture or Hungry, Hungry Hippo:The Hippo Strikes Back don't sound like appealing titles.I would imagine movies based on board games serve pretty much the same purpose as movies based on video games -- to sell the product. When Paramount Pictures released Clue, they were working with subject material that had existed since the late 40's, when Parker Brothers first released the game. For years, the board game has remained basically a whodunnit vehicle that involves six suspects, nine rooms, and six weapons.
As a movie, Clue fails on pretty much all levels. The jokes are desperate, the actors are cloying, and the mystery is as flat as Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), when it should be as buyoant as Yvette the maid (Colleen Camp). It starts on the -ahem- wrong foot when the butler Wadsworth (Tim Curry, who has one expression -- exhaustion -- in every scene) steps in doggie doo. Every subsequent guest (Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, and Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet) smells the odor upon entering the house and feigns discomfort. Are we laughing yet?
It seems the shady Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving as Alec Baldwin) has invited the group to a dinner of blackmail. Now, I've never really been very good at murder mysteries, so I always make an extra effort to pay close attention to details and suspend my disbelief. There's no reason to do that with Clue. By the end of the movie, the solution to the crime(s) has been so excruciatingly prolonged, the pace so unevenly dragged out, the clues so preposterous, that one is more apt to want to murder the screenwriter than actually give two doggie doo's as to whodunnit. After no less than six murders (seven depending on which "version" of the movie we're talking), Curry races through redundant speech after speech while the other suspects run from room to room. It's bad enough the premise is stretched beyond the breaking point of reason, but the writers decide to hack together three separate endings, which was initially a marketing ploy when the movie premiered in theatres in 1985.
The performances are deader than the corpses. Christopher Lloyd doesn't even bring his usual, trademark blustering to the table; he plum runs out of steam a quarter of the way into the picture. Richard Mull lacks any of the tangy mustard the part requires, and Michael McKean's timid approach to what should be a flamboyant part is green to say the least. Only the late Madeline Kahn, in a funny breakdown late in the movie, is all White.
Clue would be a fun film if it didn't assume the audience should automatically care what happens next. If it's supposed to be a mystery caper, it isn't suspenseful or intellectual. If it's supposed to be a comedy, it isn't funny. And if it's supposed to be an ensemble piece, the actors are individually horrid and collectively they're just plain boring. Bring on Don't Wake the Dragon:Enter the Dragon!
