Dirty Tricks

My review was written in June 1981 after a Manhattan UES screening: Despite the efforts of a willing and able cast, "Dirty Tricks" flounders as a would-be chase comedy, done in by lame writing and misjudged direction. Word of mouth is likely to be poor.

A bearded Elliott Gould toplines as Colin Chandler, a Harvard College history prof, who is harassed and chased by three pairs of adversaries out to get a secret history-revamping letter written by George Washington that was discovered by a murdered student of his. Television newswoman Polly Bishop (Kate Jackson) is pestering Chandler about the murfer story and becomes linked with him in both chase and romantic modes.

With wit and verbal humor lacking, the stars eke out pic's few laughs with physical bits and gags. Director Alvin Rakoff makes a fatal error in staging the story's frequent violence with convincing realism, a ploy which does not match the cartoonish villains (twin karate nuts, raffishly attired he-she gangster duo, bumbling FBI snoops). When the baddies and even Gould start beating up Jackson near the end of the film, it's not only unfunny but actually repellant.

Distracting from the main plot is pic's Canadian origin, jarring at times with the Boston-Cambridge locale (token location footage) and the U. S. patriotic story premise. Gould is an ingratiating lead, but script oddly has him doing self-homages with scenes echoing "Getting Straight", "Mash" and "Move" among his decade-ago pics.

Jackson makes a feisty heroine and Rich Little has a couple of good innings as Gould's best friend, but Arthur Hill's dean/villain is underwritten. Tech credits are okay.

I watched this for the famous McNamara brothers and found myself astounded by the terrible production quality, performances, script, and animal handling. Whoever allowed or directed Elliott Gould to feed pizza to a dog should have been blacklisted right away--one can only imagine the gas that the cast and crew must have had to deal with on set after *that* little incident, all for a gag that had a greater impact on the poor animal's digestive tract than it possibly could on the audience. For that alone it deserves 0 stars; the rest of the movie, though, is actually worse and more tasteless than the cardboard-like pizza that our boorish drunken homophobe of an Ivy League professor shares with his dog. Awful, awful movie. The McNamaras shine here, though, thanks to artless ADR of every line of the dialogue that must have been incomprehensible through their Canadian accents. I don't know or care what the actual plot is, and neither should you.

A mystery to be solved. Kate Jackson, formerly of "Charlie's Angels" plays a reporter getting the scoop of the century. Elliot Gould, plays a Harvard professor, getting caught in a scandal, gets involved in something deeper. A Harvard student has a letter from the 18th Century. Some people are getting killed for it. Twin killers, the underworld, are going out to get it. The question is, Is the letter from the First President of the United States real?

Since the Harvard student is the first victim, other people followed through. This movie has plenty of mystery as well as comedy. And Elliot and Kate made a great team.

It wasn't boring.

2 out of 5 stars.