Clue

This is your chance to find out that it was me who wrote the Clue review, in my house, with my laptop. I watched the comedy thriller mystery movie Clue, based on the 1949 board game of the same name. Directed by Jonathan Lynn, it was released on December 13, 1985. Starring Tim Curry, Martin Mull, and Madeline Kahn, it takes place in New England in 1954 and is rated PG, though it would be PG-13 today.

Six seemingly unconnected guests are invited to a dinner party at a mansion. They learn they aren’t so unconnected, they happen to share the same blackmailer. Another guest they thought was their host, Mr. Boddy, is the blackmailer. The butler Wadsworth arranged this so Mr. Boddy could go to jail. However, Mr. Boddy has a trick up his sleeve. He hands all the guests a weapon and turns out the light, encouraging them to kill Wadsworth. Instead, Mr. Boddy is found dead when the lights go on. With a murderer in their midst, they have to solve the mystery before any of them die. “It’s not just a game anymore”

This is an exciting moment for me. This happens to be one of my all time favorite movies. Now I get to share it with my readers. I’ll start with the tone of this movie. They perfectly balance the way you’re supposed to feel with comedy and suspense. This is a hysterical comedy. The characters are all written in a way to have them stand out, as will be mentioned later. There are a lot of silly scenarios that happen to our characters. They even throw in plenty of dad jokes that are layered well throughout the film. The comedy helps keep this murder mystery from getting too dark. But to keep it from getting too light, there is legitimate suspense. The threat of death is made quite clear. When a death happens, for the most part, it’s horrific. The movie’s background music ties very well into these two balances. The background music can be lightheartedly jazzy, but can also be tense. These contrasts ensure you are kept on the hook the whole time. However, the beginning of the movie, while kind of funny, isn’t that funny until we find out about the blackmail. Personally, I think this works for the film’s benefit. They take time at first establishing the atmosphere, playing it more tense, with the hysterical comedy coming in after we understand the environment.. So, I think the contrast in this movie is flawless.

The actors are the big appeal of the film. Each of the main actors stands out in their own way. Tim Curry is the best part of the movie. I do admit that a big reason I did this review was to bring attention to Curry. With his recent passing, I do want to bring attention to his long legacy of work. Wadsworth is my favorite Tim Curry role of all the ones I’ve seen. He brings a high energy level of comedy throughout the film. As the one new character not in the board game, he acts like the leader of the group and plays the straight man to everyone. Martin Mull plays Colonel Mustard with an authoritative yet buffoonish attitude. Madeline Kahn plays Mrs. White with a more subtle yet still unhinged personality. Lesley Ann Warren plays Miss Scarlet with a cynical, snarky bite to her. Christopher Lloyd plays Professor Plum with a hilariously fake dignified manner. Eileen Brennan plays Mrs. Peacock in a laughably hysterical way. Michael McKean plays Mr. Green in a far more enjoyably innocent and nervous way than the others. This is a really good comedic cast with tons of variety that makes every character stand out.

The story is effective. It is incredibly difficult to make a good movie out of a board game. Board games obviously aren’t designed for storytelling. They did keep basically all the elements from the board game. The suspects’ names, the weapons, the rooms, and the secret passages. But with that, they still added onto the board game. Wadsworth was created, along with supporting characters. They defined all the guests’ backstories, creating the blackmail plot to set everything up. They brilliantly made most of the guests unethical, not only explaining why they were being blackmailed, but also setting the stakes for the murder mystery. In addition, they tie in the plot with the Red Scare, taking place around that time. This helps make Mr. Boddy’s actions look especially bad, due to the even worse trouble they could get in that even they don’t deserve. This adds some good commentary on the Red Scare and what a terrible event it was.

The most brilliant part of the plot was they shot three different endings. This was done to reflect the nature of the board game, where it could have been anyone. It’s hard to make a good mystery with three different endings. They work around this by including little things throughout the movie that separately work for each ending. It’s not perfect, but for the style they were going for, this is the best they could do. Unfortunately, when the movie was released in theaters, they released it so that each theater only showed one of the endings. You had to go to different theaters to see all three. While this is a great idea on paper, it fell apart in execution. People were forced to pay three different times in a row to see the exact same movie, just with a different ending. Plus, like I said, the different endings have separate clues that don’t always match for a different ending. This works in a multiple ending movie, but with just one, the story doesn’t quite come together. Nowadays, when people watch the movie, it has all three endings put together. I think that is the best way to watch it. I also recommend getting the DVD, which has an option to play the movie with a random ending. This is like the movie theater concept, but done better. Here, you’ll likely be picking that option after you see the version with all three endings. So, it’s a fun way to watch the movie fresh and make it a guessing game. This was a flaw back then, but since it no longer applies, I wouldn’t call it a flaw anymore. The one thing I would call a flaw is that there was a planned fourth ending they cut out at the last moment. While the reasons for cutting it make sense, there were clues for that ending that remain in the movie, making it feel just a little off. Otherwise, this is an amazingly planned out story.

Overall, this is a comedic masterpiece. It leaves you bursting with laughter while also keeping you on the edge of your seat. With memorable performances and a multiple choice mystery, what’s not to love? Watch it and try to find your clue to correctly guess at least one ending.

From a social issues standpoint, the guests in the movie were guilty of unethical behavior. There is also unethical behavior in our legal system. There are too many cases where either innocent people get convicted of crimes they didn’t commit or guilty people get off for crimes they did commit. I did already do a review where I addressed the issue of how to help innocent people. So while this could help that too, I want to address the corruption in the legal system mainly for holding guilty people accountable. There are things we can do about this corruption. You can protest to get change made. Drive public awareness about what we need on social media. Some things that can be advocated for are transparency, safety for whistleblowers, having investigative groups, training people to look for corruption, and keeping more records of evidence. We can fight corruption and have the guilty held accountable if we all work together on this.