Clue
1985 · Directed by Jonathan Lynn
Original language: English
- comedy
- crime
- mystery
The story
Clue finds six colorful dinner guests gathered at the mansion of their host, Mr. Boddy -- who turns up dead after his secret is exposed: He was blackmailing all of them. With the killer among them, the guests and Boddy's chatty butler must suss out the culprit before the body count rises.
What it’s like
Brightly lit, theatrical comedy in a hulking old mansion, with candlelit dark corridors, pooling shadows, hidden passages, and costumes in saturated reds, greens, and mustards. The camera moves briskly through rooms set up like stage tableaux, and the score is bouncy and mock-suspenseful, punctuated by thunderclaps and sudden stings. The mood is giddy and deliberately overheated, with rapid-fire banter, pratfalls, and a parade of screwball reveals that keep the energy high from one scene to the next. Violence is cartoonish and mostly off to the side, with a few deaths played for laughs rather than gore, and the innuendo is cheeky rather than explicit. Its emotional register is light and silly, and its arcs are simple: a roomful of suspicious guests and a fussy butler gradually unraveling their own secrets. It suits a rainy weekend afternoon, a group watch with a few friends, or a comfort rewatch when you want something playful and clever. It is for viewers who enjoy farce, quick wit, and old-fashioned whodunit fun.
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