KenToo

This movie has a little of the Airplane! Humor where there are lots of random jokes thrown in various places. A couple of the jokes are so similar to jokes in Airplane! They might have been plagiarized.

I really love Peter Falk, anything he's in including Columbo movies, Murder By Death, and the In-Laws. He's great funny or straight. This is my favorite Peter Falk movie.

Not every joke's a winner, but some are just really, really great. (e.g., "It makes more sense if I leave first." "Why's that?" "Then I don't get stuck with the check!") Or the corpse with the bullet hole in the head who was holding a phone, and one cop asks another, "Why was he calling?" "The morgue... We figure he saw the bullet coming." Now, I did not see the various Bogart movies this is spoofing, so that is definitely not required to enjoy it. However, I certainly was aware of Bogart in general, and had seen plenty of snippets of old detective movies, to appreciate the feel of it.

It does not have as many laughs as, say, Airplane! Or Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles, as I think it is more low key than that and does not toss in as many jokes per minute, but still very enjoyable. Not as good as the best Mel Brooks movies (e.g., Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles) or the best Zucker bros movies (e.g., Airplane!) but better than 99% of the comedy movies out there. Comedies have evolved, and so older movies like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World that were considered the best of their time have not, IMO, aged well and the humor seems dated. Airplane! Was really the start of a whole new, fresh approach to comedies and spoofs. The Cheap Detective is still more of the older style and so, yeah, may feel a bit dated in places, but I still like it a whole lot better than that "Mad Mad World" movie. Way better than "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid," (which was mediocre, not terrible, not great). It's also fun to see this kind of ensemble cast, so many great actors even in smaller roles.

This movie got oscars based on the GIMMICK of using real people to tell their "living on the road" stories and intermixing this with a few professional actors. It basically has no plot, no drama, nothing actually happens. Slice of life movies can be okay, but this one is nothing special. The gimmick of mixing real actors with real people telling real personal stories is heavy-handed and jarring. My wife was complaining of some of the people's acting being so wooden (before we knew some of the people were not acting) and halfway through, I told her, "it is almost as if they grabbed real people and mixed them in with some actors"). The fact you have to break out of your investment in the movie to wonder about the jarring inconsistency in delivery of lines, in tone from drama to documentary, is a fundamental flaw. It is like that movie Dogtown that got critical acclaim for having no setting (like "Our Town") but in reality the lack of any setting was just jarring. They do not remove distraction by removing setting, they create distraction. Jarring gimmicks are poor film-making.

I'd give it 8.5, but I can't so I rounded up. This is definitely a classic. I've rewatched it many times. Once you start, you get sucked in. When it's over, you feel a little sad there isn't more of it, like a sequel. There are too many dark/night shots for my liking, but otherwise it is a treat.