Columbo: Murder with Too Many Notes

The decent assembling of Billy Connelly as the murderer and Patrick McGoohan behind the camera, merely compounds the disappointment of this largely unsatisfying, lukewarm 1999 Columbo TV movie, which sees Connelly play a highly-respected Hollywood composer who is forced to murder the dissatisfied understudy he has used to saved his flagging career.

Strongly enough plotted; a rather good platform is established in the early stages, but the momentum is barely maintained simply because the supporting clues are patchy in nature and moreover, the screen chemistry between Falk and Connelly is decidedly hit-and-miss; in fact Connelly's portrayal struggles to make an decent impact as he seems to be caught between a serious and a comedic interpretation of his character.

The finale is also on the bizarre side and is staged at the murder scene on top of a building: Columbo's evidence is not particularly overwhelming and Connelly's character more or less turns round and gives himself up. Also, in an odd error of fact, Columbo asks the deceased's partner to teach him to play Columbo's trademark song "this old man" on the piano, but he says that it is something that his wife hums; when we know that it is actually him who usually whistles the song.

A largely disappointing effort, which stands to date, as the penultimate Columbo adventure in its history and one that will not be recalled in a positive light.

Findlay Crawford is an award winning film composer with a small secret – most of his best work has been written standing on the shoulders of the young, uncredited composer Gabriel McEnery. Now that Gabriel has started asking for some credit and has begun being vocal about it in front of others, Crawford decides that the time is right and placates him with the offer of conducting at a show the next night. However he has no intention of letting this happen and instead drugs Gabriel and puts him on the roof (where he usually hangs out) on top of a defunct lift panel. As he starts his show he times the lift to go to the roof, thus opening the panel and flipping Gabriel's comatose body off the roof to his death. All seems like a pointless waste of young talent to the witnesses but a stray noise tells Columbo that there is more to this than a tragic accident or suicide.

This is the most recent Columbo that I have seen and I was therefore very worried that it would be terrible as some of the ones I've seen from around 1990 have been mostly average at best. However the directing presence of Columbo regular McGoohan made me think again plus the plot summary suggested that, having already caught a Spielberg clone, Columbo was going after John Williams. This may be the case but given that I don't know much about Williams outside of his music so any sly digs at him were lost on me. The plot is pretty clever and it was developed well enough to hold my interest but the ending is really weak and is not enough to trap Crawford even in the world of TV detectives. The direction is good and the film feels quite modern, which I know it is but it was still a new feel for the Columbo movies for me.

The cast are so-so and mostly good. Falk was good for the most part but at times his Columbo seemed to be almost an impression of Columbo; this is most evident when trying to "name that tune" with Crawford's orchestra. Outside of this he is good but it is not his best turn in the mac. Connolly is a solid choice of guest star and he works well with Falk – it is nice to have a genuine big name in the suspect's chair. He is a big character as well and, although toned down from his comic personae, he still provides a good presence. The support isn't that great but it doesn't really matter that much (although Willett looks about 12 years old).

Overall an enjoyable film from the Columbo series despite the weak ending and a performance that isn't Falk's best. Maybe not enough to convince unbelievers that the long running series is deserved but fans will find it easy to enjoy.

The murder plot is actually pretty ingenious, and the murderer, actor Billy Connoly, is quite interesting as Columbo's foil. But the writing is dreadful, as it leaves tons of stuff unexplained and puts in tons of stuff for no seeming purpose or connection to the plot. Early on, when Columbo drives the killer home in an endlessly long scene, it is obviously for some purpose, but that purpose is never explained. An extended focus on a certain aspect of the victim's clothing is likewise endlessly extended, but leaves it very unclear as to what Columbo is seeking to prove with it. Finally, in the final scene, he re-enacts the murder in a staged childlike manner, bringing up issues that seemingly have no connection to his proof, and offers a final "proof" that is one of the least convincing in Columbo history, yet the murderer smilingly gives up w/o any argument. And the final big clue is obtained after the medical examiner overlooked an obvious piece of evidence that would have cost any ME his job. What is most frustrating is that for long stretches of this movie, it is actually highly enjoyable, and with the fine acting of the murderer and the directing of the great Columbo contributor Patrick McGoohan, it could easily have been turned into a dandy episode, if only the writing was at more than a B-movie level.

The Columbo series, starring Peter Falk in his famous role as Lt. Columbo, first started off in 1968 with the movie "Prescription: Murder". Five decades later the first 21th century Columbo movie got released. It's a known fact that all later Columbo movies are not as good- and lack the charm and simplicity of the earlier Columbo movies, from mostly the '70's. Unfortunately this movie also suffers from this.

Like basically every 'weaker' Columbo movie entry, the introduction takes far too long. The movie is only about 98 minutes short but it isn't until about halve an hour into the movie. It of course is only also after that, that Lt. Columbo first shows up.

It's extra disappointing that this movie isn't among the best Columbo entries since it got directed by Patrick McGoohan. He directed more Columbo movies, prior to this one and his movies always had a certain bit of extra style, which made the movies rise above the level of average. He also had some misses in his 'Columbo-directing career' though and this movie is among one of those misses.

Problem is that the story is really not that interesting. It really isn't a very exciting murder-mystery movie to watch. It's way too slowly progressing and besides, the reason why the murder gets committed seemed quite dodgy to me. Come on, why does he kill the boy? Was he really such a big treat to him or his career? He still had his reputation in his advantage after all. Why risk so much? It above all is also a quite poorly executed murder. It's done needlessly complicated and left for too many traces at the same time. That alone is also already a real accomplishment. Yet Lt. Columbo at first doesn't pay attention to the most obvious clues as well (the pieces of glass in the hand, the tox screen, etcetera). Seriously, that's not really Columbo style, now is it.

The movie is about a movie composer, so throughout the movie we see him conducting. It's however quite annoying to see that he's never conducting to the music we hear. I'm not even a musical person but you don't have to be a musical genius to see that his conducting and the music we hear don't mix with each other. This to me was quite annoying. It also was quite annoying to hear the actual music, that obviously come straight of the tape and wasn't being played by the orchestra we see on screen all the time. Sounds nitpicking but those things simply bothered me and also prevented me from taking the entire movie and story serious as a good and professionally made one.

Peter Falk is still in good form as Lt. Columbo in this movie, despite his age. He already was well in his 70's at the time of this production. A real good and clever police man would be enjoying his pension by then. Billy Connolly is also acting nicely but I think he deserved a better script to work with. He does his very best with his character but due to the story you just never get close enough to the character. Richard Riehle also appears in the movie again, who previously starred also in the other previous Patrick McGoohan directed Columbo movie "Columbo: Ashes to Ashes", in the same role.

Not a great 21th century Columbo-entry.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Having seen almost all the Columbo movies I was disappointed by this latest offering. Peter Falk was trying hard to recreate his best form as the raincoat claden detective but sadly fell short.

The character interaction was predictable and with the likes of Patrick McGoohan directing (again) and the ever 'loud' and 'outrageous' Billy Connolly one would have hoped for a far better script to do justice to this great series of TV movies.