via – IMDB – Murder By Death
If you’re not easily offended, which, if you listen to the podcast or read the blog, I would assume you’re not. If you like older movies, especially ones that actually have a couple of actors who aren’t alive anymore, I would suggest “Murder By Death
Now for the offensive(?) part. There is an actor in the movie, Peter Sellers, who is clearly not Chinese, who dresses up and portrays a Chinese Asian of the 50s. Which is odd, because his character has a son who is obviously Asian, possibly Japanese as the movie suggests. So I can only guess that they picked Inspector Jecaues Clouseau to be funny. Now I listen to podcasts that have Asians in it, and I’m Asian myself, despite whatever you guys think, and I wasn’t offended. But I know that the people in those podcasts would be, so I kind of felt like I should be offended, but I wasn’t. I actually found it humorous and probably an homage to Charlie Chan, but I don’t know, I didn’t research it.
The story revolves around a millionaire, played by Truman Capote, which threw me off guard and kind of weirded me out, (not in a bad way mind you, just in a “so that’s what he looks like? He’s a strange looking fellow”. You know, that sort of thing.) who invites five of the greatest detectives and their plus one to a dinner and a MURDER. Yes, that’s what the invitations says. The entire movie is rife with the antics of the detectives, with the visual gags of the butler and the maid, and the kind of dry sense of humor that, if you’re not paying attention, will totally pass you by.
So there’s Columbo, aka Peter Faulk, which I’m not sure many people would no anymore, because I have no idea the age range of the people who come to visit this site and read these blogs. I mean, they’re long blog posts filled with strange tangents, like this one. Obi Wan Kenobi, Alec Guinness is in this movie!! Sir Alec Guinness! That’s pretty awesome. And then there’s Professor MacGonagall, Maggie Smith, looking all hot and bothered in this film. So as you can see, there are a quite a few amazing actors showing up to this party. A party of MURDER!
I was highly skeptical at first that I was going to enjoy the movie. It’s not hysterical, but you will laugh out loud a few times, and some of the jokes may go over your head, much like it did mine, but all in all, I think you’ll have a good time watching this flick and enjoying the very extreme personalities of the actors throughout. If I were to give this a rating, I’d give it a 3 out of 5 insert celestial object here. It’s a fun, it’s a little dated, has a white guy playing a Chinese guy, but still has humor that almost anyone can enjoy.
