In 1985, a movie called "Fletch" was released starring Chevy Chase as the title character. I haven't seen it, or its sequel "Fletch Lives." I was aware of the first movie, but not being a fan of Chase I never watched it. As it turns out, Jon Hamm's outing as Fletch isn't so much a revival of Chase's character as a revival of a character created by novelist Gregory Mcdonald, who wrote ten Fletch novels and another six spin-off novels about related characters. Chase's first movie appears to be a plot match for the first Fletch novel, while this movie draws its title (and presumably plot) from one of the later novels.

Jon Hamm plays Irwin Maurice Fletcher, who really doesn't like his first names and prefers to be called "Fletch." We first see him arriving at an upscale rental in Boston, where he finds a young woman dead on the floor. We rapidly find out his reactions aren't like other people's: he has a casual phone call with the police about the dead body, and then relaxes with a drink in his hand. He then proceeds to irritate the investigators (Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri) by being equally casual and unconcerned with them - thus becoming their prime suspect even though he placed the call.

Fletch is in Boston looking for some paintings stolen from the family of his Italian girlfriend (Lorenza Izzo). As Fletch keeps telling people, "I was an investigative reporter of some repute." The police try to trail him as he investigates both the murder and the paintings, with only mixed results: he's very good at losing tails by a variety of eccentric and humourous methods. Ultimately he gets his answers and is almost killed over a missed detail (don't give me this "spoiler alert!" crap - we already discussed him starring in a very long series of books). He's referred to as "stupid" several times, but I think that's really missing the point - and also the police officers who called him that were too smart to have missed the fact that he's a very sharp guy. Occasionally sloppy, and definitely arrogant (which they more accurately called him), but they knew what he'd done and he didn't get there by being stupid.

Hamm as Fletch is very good. His comedic timing is good, although I think I've seen him do better in other movies. I think part of that opinion is based on the movie's insistence on cutting over to Fletch's face for reaction shots, in which he grimaces or frowns or whatever, and that's supposed to be funny. Not as much so as they thought it was ... he was far better in action and dialogue scenes. And the ending was disappointing: another layer of deception is revealed that felt particularly unbelievable (it upped my opinion of Fletch's intelligence and lowered my opinion of his emotional intelligence in one swift stroke). But - and I guess this is probably the most important judgment - I would return to watch Hamm in the role again: it was fun enough for that.