Columbo: Murder in Malibu

Except for Peter Falk, who is as good as ever in his Columbo role, all the other cast members fail to play their role convincingly. It was like watching a bad soap. Maybe the director of this episode, Walter Grauman,is partly to blame for that ?

Weak plot, lots of continuity mistakes, lots of camera shadows on people, stretched-out phone ringing, car following and walking scenes that hampers the flow and reveal a thin scenario. This episode could have lasted at most an hour, instead of stretching it to an hour and a half.

Also, the attempt at moving away from the usual Columbo recipe by not showing how the murder took place is only confusing and not helping the story telling.

All in all, one of the very few very bad Columbo episodes, fortunately.

Jackson Gillis wrote some of the best scripts for the 70's Columbo series and he's on hand here to modify the old Columbo formula in this 1990 production.

The admission by producers with these "new" Columbo adventures is that the detective's well-known and well-received characterisation is no longer singled-handedly able to support an ordinary, Murry mystery script. This TV movie is a case in point - we are never quite sure who the murderer is until the end, something that completely goes against Columbo tradition...

It's too long for what it finally reveals and some of the acting is soap-opera style at best, but the character of Columbo remains charming to this day (something that Peter Falk deserves a lot of credit for). Watchable, but there are better "new" Columbo adventures around and it it still hard to bear largely second-rate stars acting as the murderers when some of the top actors/actresses graced the Columbo series in the 70's.

Good lord, this is atrocious. First the good news. Peter Falk is as terrific as always. Anybody in a scene with him in this movie pales in comparison. He is basically wasted in this thing. His sleuthing, especially toward the end, is solid.

The acting by everybody else is soooo bad, its unreal. Andrew Stevens is just beyond bad. He over acts or he's bland. There is no in between. Geez, is this really the best they could do ? The story is boring. Long winded. I was glad when this movie ended. By the time the end came i did not care. Everybody besides Falk was mediocre to pretty bad. This was painful to watch. I did like some of the ocean and beach scenery. Maybe because nobody was talking. Lol.

Best moment : there isn't one.

Famous authoress Teresa Goren finally wakes up to the truth that her young lover Wayne Jennings is not so much in love with her as he is in love with her money. She tells him the wedding is off and that he'll never get a penny of her assets; this doesn't exactly please Jennings so, before Goren can tell anyone of her decision, he kills her and covers his trail, making it look like a robbery gone wrong in her house. Columbo joins the investigation and notes that the robber was able to cleanly break into the safe but still smashed glass to get through a very basic wooden door. Naturally he suspects Jennings but, with the evidence seemingly clearing him, he turns to him for help.

It may say more about me than anything else but there must be something wrong with a film where the main thing that gets my heart going is the sight of a cherry picker being used without any harnesses being worn and sadly that is the most memorable moment in this film. The plot is pretty much to formula so in theory it should have been OK, which as a fan I suppose it is but the problem is with the delivery of the story. The case is reasonably interesting but it doesn't develop that well and it does involve Columbo knowing an uncomfortable amount about woman's underwear. However the plots have never been the strongest in Columbo and it is usually the formula that carries the film – a formula that we all know but one that involves strong performances from the leads, something that is lacking here.

It isn't Falk's fault because he does his usual stuff pretty well and will please fans with a character that has given him the career that he has. No, the problem is with pretty much everybody else. Stevens is hardly of the standard of suspect that we have come to expect and he doesn't work with Falk at all well. He is bland and dull in a formula that calls for presence, chemistry or at least energy; true to script gave him a soft character but he still has to carry some of the blame. Likewise Vaccaro, Levine, Walters and others all barely do the minimum required of them and nobody really helped Falk do a job that, on this occasion, he couldn't do by himself.

Overall this is an OK Columbo because in essence the formula is in place but really it is done without any great skill or effort. The story is poorly developed and didn't engage me and, with such roundly uninspiring performances, this problem was laid bare and was not one that the film could recover from. Fans might just get something from it but there are many, many better Columbo films out there.

In the 1990s, the scriptwriters of Columbo started to subtly break with the common episode structures. Humorous and witty episodes like It's All in the Game or Undercover were the result. This 1990 episode was probably one of the first, where the audience was a little bit deceived because they believed to know how Columbo episodes work. Self-irony (`I've never solved a case that quickly!'), a great Brenda Vaccaro and plot twists - not only in connection with the murder! Very good work!