Word: falke
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...Leibman is a brash and at times abrasive character actor who does not have what it takes to be a movie star. The small screen is another matter. TV audiences adore performers who burst into their living rooms like loudmouthed relatives. Though such actors as Peter Falk, Telly Savalas, Robert Blake and Carroll O'Connor never caused a sensation in movies, they all made it quickly to TV superstardom. Thanks to Kaz, Leibman will soon join their ranks...
...Cheap Detective--Neil Simon keeps those pots boiling with another patently bogus ploy to unite famous detectives and get them to satirize themselves. Peter Falk is no Bogey, however, and nobody else is who he is supposed to be either. The plot is some clone of the Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and whatever else. Puffed up with hocks and the usual empty calories that Neil Simon spoons out so handily this might better have been titled The Big Turkey or The Maltese Sleep. Go see the originals...
Director Moore tries to disguise the laziness of Simon's effort with a quick step pace, but Peter Falk, although he does a good imitation of Bogart's snarly lisp, tends to give the game away by resting on that modest achievement. Few of the other "all-stars" do much more than trace a broad Crayola line around fa miliar types. The Cheap Detective offers a few snorts of recognition and a basically good-natured air. But frankly, they did this sort of thing just as well, and a lot more quickly, on the Carol Burnett Show...
...horrible confines of the format, there were a number of unquestionable standouts (at least in Act I): Shipley Munson as the aforementioned squeakyvoiced space-person named Xeno Phobia, Michael Der Manuelian as the slick and sleazy Otto Beolaw, Stephen Hayes as the seductive and slinky Giovanna Dance, and Willy Falk (Betty Won't--get it??)--my personal favorite--as the wacky robot R2E2. (To those actors who undoubtedly stood out in Act II: I offer my apologies for not having stuck around...
...exception, but it's a looser and much better script than Murder, and a much better movie. There were 11 names above the title in Murder; here there are 16. Cheap Detective largely shoots off The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, and Chinatown. Peter Falk is sensational...