557. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Starring: Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, Carl Reiner

Director: Carl Reiner

Running Time: 88 mins

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is an American film about a private detective named Rigby who is hired to investigate a suspicious death of a cheese scientist, while he meets some famous film noir characters along the way…

This film is pretty funny. I’ve never been the biggest fan of film noir, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they could make this story, which is a complete rip-off of every film noir in the past, both interesting as well as hilarious by way of its idiotic comedy.

The story of this film is just a parody of every film noir, and because of that, you don’t have to take too much of an interest in the plot to really enjoy it, however I do feel that the only negative of this film was that, at points, it seemed to over-indulge itself in its own plot rather than continue taking the mick out of itself.

And seeing as this is a parody, the nature of the comedy is quite similar to Airplane!, where although this may not be as non-sensical as the disaster thriller, it’s got a whole heap of idiotic jokes, running gags and ridiculously fake characters that give it a similar feel.

Luckily, it’s also nearly as funny as Airplane!. Almost every scene contains some sort of ridiculous farce that leaves you constantly laughing out loud, and the classic joke about the ‘cleaning woman’ is a side-splittingly hilarious moment every single time it pops up.

On a technical aspect, this film is also pretty good. Along with some great cinematography, the way that this film actually splices scenes from film noirs of the past is one of the most genius ideas I’ve ever seen, and definitely adds to how funny every scene is, because it emphasises the parodic nature of this film, and makes for some hilariously unnatural conversations.

Overall, this gets a 7.4, because it’s an absolutely hilarious and stupid parody film that’s consistently entertaining, and although it often goes too deep into its own story, it’s a classically funny comedy.