Twenty Plus Two

"Twenty Plus Two" is an unusual film in that I re-started it about 20 minutes into the story. This is because although I was watching, I was distracted by other things....and this is NOT a film to watch when there are any distractions! It's complicated...and still worth seeing.

David Janssen plays Tom Alder, a man much like his TV character Richard Diamond, the detective. But Alder is not quite as smooth and isn't quite as irresistible to the ladies...though two women in the film clearly adore him.

Alder makes his living finding lost people. One old case that has been unsolved for well over a decade involved a rich young lady who just disappeared. The film shows the steps Alder takes to eventually find this woman and solve the mystery of her disappearance.

While I'd quickly admit that Janssen's acting is sometimes a bit wooden, I like him in his various shows and movies. He's quite good here and the story is good but almost needs a map to help you keep up with all the twists and turns. My only complaint, and it's minor, is that too many things seem coincidental...but this is a small matter. Well worth seeing.

It's a mostly intriguing story... a young girl had gone missing years ago. now, when a woman is murdered, people start looking into the missing girl again, for various reasons. David Janssen (two years before his very successful series The Fugitive) is an investigator, and bits of his own past start coming out. some twists and surprises along the way. but also some pretty big plot holes that really should have been ironed out. pretty weak script. the acting is fine, but just some sloppy directing and creaky screenplay. some fun co-stars here.. Agnes Moorehead was so good in Dark Passage and the many projects with orson wells. Bill Demarest was in so many old films and My Three Sons... both actors getting up there by now. Demarest's character was so old, wrinkled, and ornery, I didn't recognize him when I saw him in the bar scene. Dina Merrill, who I knew from Desk Set. 20 + 2 directed by Joe Newman. never did anything too big. written by Frank Gruber; wrote lots of westerns and murder stories. and has an interesting quote that there are really only seven basic westerns. check it out on his imdb page. the film is very watchable, but has its flaws. Janssen died at 48... heart attack, according to wikipedia dot org. check it out... some huge names at his funeral. we should all be so lucky.

The producers were able to assemble a usually fine cast for this mystery movie, but the problem is, they all really ham it up so much that it almost becomes laughable. The worst hams are Jeanne Crain, Agnes Moorehead, and William Demarast, but Janssen does his share of chewing up the scenery, too. The mysterious plot is somewhat interesting but another problem is that the script just calls for these hams to stand, sit, or sometimes even lay around talking, talking, and talking even more. There is very little action here, just a bunch of verbalization that sometimes goes on and on. After seeing the scene when Janssen visits Moorehead, who is over the top with her hamminess, I concluded that the producers of TV's "Bewitched" must have seen it and said - oh yeah, we just found our outrageous Endora.

I still give this six stars, only because it is interesting to watch - and you really can't turn it off, waiting to see just which of these usually good actors it going to out ham the other ones !

A lawyer begins a search for a woman who went missing as a teen ten years before. He is also forced at gunpoint to take on a search for the missing brother of "the king of the confidence men." He interviews colorful characters, knocks on doors, has flashbacks to his own life, and it all comes together at the end.

The plot is intriguing. It is complicated enough to demand your full attention, but not so complicated to be hard to follow. The jazz score has been done many times before and since. It goes well with the movie, but it is inappropriately intrusive here and there.

All in all, a nice, neat job. My one complaint is that costar, Jeanne Crain, has little to do here. The costar should have been Dina Merril. I am not so much concerned about billing, I am just a devoted fan of Jeanne Crain

In Hollywood, Julia Joliet is murdered. She's a small time secretary answering fan mail for a movie star. What catches the attention of private investigator Tom Alder is that she has collected clippings from the Doris Delaney case. Delaney was a missing heiress and her parents spared no expense to find her with no success. Alder decides to follow the clue.

I generally like the hard-boiled detective style and this has an intriguing start. I don't particularly like his meandering investigation. It seems a little slow and I'm never sure about his moves. Then it loses me in a flashback. The problem is that the flashback happens without much context since the audience isn't shown the old photographs. She's also a little older than I expect. The case is over a decade old but it may need to double that. It is also very coincidental. It's unlikely that he would be investigating the case without any pictures at the start. The whole thing is a house of cards built on a knife's edge.