Getting Away with Murder

This is a rather mild and forgettable comedy, but I think it deserves a **1/2 rating, if only because it dares to deal with some ambiguous subjects (like vigilantism) without become overly moralizing. The viewer is allowed to think (or not think, if he does not wish to) for himself. It's not a funny movie, I'll grant you that, and Jack Lemmon is thoroughly wasted, but it's an interesting one nonetheless.

I found this movie not as bad as everybody says it is. I think its pretty entertaining. I really liked the plot of the film.

Maybe it's just because I like Dan Aykroyd: I have never seen a movie with him that I did not enjoy. I decided to put in a few lines of appreciation for this one, considering the bad reviews read here. It certainly is not the ultimate masterpiece of comedy but I found it thoroughly enjoyable, and despite the fact that I was very tired it kept watching it until 2am.

Professor Lambert lectures on ethics and morals at a local University and lives alone in a quiet suburban area. However when his neighbour, is accused of war crimes as a Nazi he isn't sure what to think. When he is told that Mueller is about to leave for Ecuador, where he will be free to live out his life without extradition he cannot morally accept it and decides to take action by murdering him. However Lambert's ethics and need for justice soon cause the whole plan to crumble in a moral mess.

I'd never heard of this film when I watched it but Dan Aykroyd is usually an OK bet – even if he's not as funny as Bill Murray often manages. However after watching this I understand why I hadn't heard of it. The plot is OK at the start but the moral reasoning that drives much of the latter stages doesn't ring true and it feels like the film is just trying to muddle through to a very unsatisfactory ending that also feels like they weren't sure how it should end so they just stopped!

As a drama it doesn't work at all, sadly as a comedy it has no laughs at all. Not a smile, I assumed it was a bad drama until a glance at the listings told me it was meant to be a comedy! A misguided drama I can understand, but to pitch something so lame as a comedy is beyond justification.

The cast are wasted here. Names like Tomlin, Lemmon, Aykroyd and Adler really need better material than this to show what they can do. Here they do the best they can but they can turn a sow's ear into a purse.

Overall this is a failed comedy and a drama that is failing with every plot step. The end result is a film that is neither funny or dramatic – it is merely mediocre and very dull.

Dan Ayrkoyd, looking boxy and well-scrubbed, plays a college professor in Massachusetts who is caught up in the media frenzy surrounding elderly German neighbor Jack Lemmon, who has been accused of being a notorious Nazi war criminal living under an assumed identity; when Lemmon tells Aykroyd he intends to leave the country in protest, Aykroyd plots to poison him as a form of historical justice. Writer-director Harvey Miller probably intended this dark-hued comedy to be a twisted hoot, in the "Eating Raoul" vein. He apparently gained the trust of his talented performers--and comedy vet Penny Marshall was swayed enough to co-produce--but something must have gotten lost in the translation from screenplay to film, because there are hardly any laughs in this scenario. The cast plays it poker-faced...perhaps they weren't sure just how over-the-top the presentation should be. Results are curiously lukewarm, and full of dumb jokes like one involving Lemmon's dog being attracted to Aykroyd's crotch--which Miller then repeats, as a TV director might. *1/2 from ****