Confess That You’re Insufferable, Fletch

Confessing doesn’t make you less guilty, alas.

Rating: 4/10

Greg Mottola’s Confess, Fletch is a movie about the untrammeled success of an irritating privileged doofus which goes out of its way to tell you that the irritating privileged doofus and his untrammeled success are irritating. It is self-aware. Which really just makes it more irritating.

Jon Hamm mugs his way through the role of Irwin M. Fletcher, aka Fletch, a journalist/critic/trickster figure who supposedly embodies schlubby cool. Fletch gets himself involved in complicated shenanigans involving art theft and kidnapping and eventually is framed for murder. But the main point is watching his insouciant, irreverent banter as he bamboozles and befuddles his way through various cutesy scenarios and along the way slouches into the bed and heart of the stunning Angela de Grassi (Lorenza Izzo.)

By the end the script assures us that Fletch is not the genius he pretends to be, as the crime is actually solved by Sergeant Monroe (Roy Wood, Jr.) and Detective Griz (Ayden Mayeri)—cops who are, tellingly, not white guys. But somehow, even though Fletch is revealed as a self-impressed dumb-ass, he still gets to headline the film and to have the really preposterously happy ending.  It’s like the fact that he is worthless, charmless, and egocentric is supposed to make him all the more lovable; we’re meant to root for him because he has no redeeming features.

Or are we supposed to root for him because he’s the white guy in the title? It’s the same thing, of course. Maybe if the supposedly witty dialogue were actually witty or if Hamm was as fun to watch as, say, Daniel Craig in Glass Onion, I’d be less bitter about having watched this. But it isn’t and he isn’t, and this movie is simply a joyless exercise in reasserting that just because you recognize your movie kind of sucks does not, unfortunately, stop it from sucking.