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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
This is one of the best parodies of the '40s hardboiled detective genre, with a very clever conceit: weaving the plot and production design around memorable movie clips (The Killers, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, White Heat, This Gun for Hire, Sorry, Wrong Number, Notorious). Steve Martin plays the cool Rigby Reardon, who tries solving an incomprehensible mystery with the assistance of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Fred MacMurray, Ingrid Bergman, and Ray Milland, among others. It's all silly hokum with Rachel Ward as the pretty moll and director-cowriter Carl Reiner as the nefarious villain. Miklos Rozsa takes us back to yesteryear with his lush score, and, fittingly, Edith Head handles the period costumes in her final production. --Bill Desowitz
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid [Region 2] Reviews:
Almost a classic in its own right 
2009-06-22 - Steve Martin stars in this comedy which relies upon clips from classic films to fill out its plot. The unlikely plot twists, dramatic scenes and actors from the classic age of the gangster film make this a fun film, even if it sometimes relies on some very bad jokes to get some of its points across.
What a Wild & Crazy Dick (Detective, That is)!!
2009-05-03 - That's what we called 'em, sweetheart.
Carl Reiner and Steve Martin put together a collage of films from the 1940s and 1950s, along with a silly script that could have come out of the melodramatic film noir of the time. The dialogue meshed perfectly with the old clips they used to make a somewhat coherent, funny story.
Steve tries to solve the murder of a girl's father and while looking, find love, murder, bullets being sucked out of shoulders and other silly stuff.
They run into many stars of the period: Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Cagney, Joan Crawford: Like 19 different stars of the time.
Steve dressing as a blonde and getting picked up by Fred McMurray in a grocery store (Double Indemnity) was especially funny.
Rent this today!
Great Film! 
2009-04-11 - A great movie from Steve Martin. I wish they would show this one on TV more because nobody seems to know about it! Great editing and constantly funny I laughed the whole movie. The only thing I didn't like was the DVD claimed to be 1:85:1 widescreen but it has black bars surrounding the top botton and both sides. But otherwise BUY THIS MOVIE! Great laughs
Gimmicky homage to film noir 
2009-03-17 - I'm wondering what was the point in actually making this movie. I'm sure it was a lot of fun for the filmmakers to blend Steve Martin into classic film noirs especially in terms of matching the sets, the stand-ins and the musical score. But such cleverness doesn't extend to the actual script which didn't have much of a story. Many of the scenes seemed completely extraneous to the plot, designed merely to show off the great actors of yesteryear. At best, Steve Martin's goofy humor is only mildly amusing at times. The best jokes are trotted out more than once (e.g. Rigby's 'cleaning woman' tantrum and Rachel Ward sucking out the bullet from Rigby's arm). But for the most part DMWNP is not funny at all. The main problem is that no real dramatic interplay develops in this story. Because the story is basically a gimmick, Steve Martin merely interacts with a bunch of film clips and is not pitted against any significantly developed antagonists. The "B" Story, the love story between Steven Martin and Rachel Ward is simply a collection of juvenile sexual innuendos (for example, when Martin grabs Ward's breasts in the opening scene). If you take away all of Steve Martin's silly asides, you're pretty much left with a standard by-the-numbers film noir, thoroughly mediocre and uninspired.
A Classic!
2009-02-14 - One of the best comedies of all time! I had this on VHS, and just had to replace it on DVD. It's not intellectual comedy, but it's a lot of fun, silly jokes through the whole movie. I've probably seen it 20 times since I first got it years and years ago, and it still makes me laugh!
