Review of The Cheap Detective (1978) by Daniel K — 11 Oct 2007

"The Cheap Detective" is a hardboiled detective comedy film written by Neil Simon. Specifically, it borrows a lot of its plot from "Casablanca" (1942) and "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). There are a few references to "Chinatown" (1974) as well and most importantly a lot of humor injected in.

Peter Falk effectively plays Lou Peckinpaugh as a humorous send-up of Sam Spade and Rick Blaine. I enjoyed the other performances as well, particularly Nicol Williamson as a character parodying Major Strasser from "Casablanca" and John Houseman playing a character very similar to Kasper Gutman from "The Maltese Falcon". The only character that could have been better was Pepe Damascus, in a Peter Lorre type role, played by Dom DeLuise.

This film is funny in several respects. The dialogue is amusing and often emulates and parodies the snappy dialogue of "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon". Since the plot is cobbled together largely from those movies, there are a number of scenes like a humorous modification of the "La Marseillaise" scene from "Casablanca". Simon added a number of amusing complexities, sometimes nonsensical, into the script as a parody of the complexities in "The Maltese Falcon". Overall this film was consistently funny from start to finish. I recommend "The Cheap Detective" as a satire for people that enjoyed "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon".