The Man Who Knew Too Little

Apparently, there was a time when Bill Murray seemed to have been in movies that people did not like. I did not know this because I have not seen “all” of Bill Murray’s films. However, when I was returning home from an overseas trip 2½ years ago, I was looking through the films they had available. I ended up watching “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” released in 1997.

Murray plays Wallace Ritchie, a Blockbuster video employee from Iowa who pays a surprise visit to his investment banker brother in London. The brother, James, played by Peter Gallagher, has an important dinner to attend to, however, so he looks for something to keep Wally busy for a few a hours.

What he finds is “Theatre of Life.” It’s a theater group with a twist: For a small price, you become part of the play. You improvise as the actors lead you through an insane murder mystery that takes you through the real streets of London. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

The twist here is that Wally accidentally gets involved in an actual international secrecy-type crime, but he doesn’t realize it – he thinks he’s in a play, and that all the people around him are actors.

Surprisingly little suspension of disbelief is required here. Once you can accept the idea of there being something called “Theatre of Life” – and it’s really not that unbelievable an idea. Perhaps something like this already exists – then you can accept everything.

Eric D. Snider said in his review, “Great use is made of every-day conversation that could be taken in two ways. Wally refers to “improvising,” “setting the stage,” “knockin’ ’em dead” — all expressions that he uses to refer to the “play” he’s in, but which the other characters use to mean the real-life situation they’re dealing with.”

Snider continued, “Robert Farrar did an excellent job adapting his book “Watch That Man” into a screenplay that is inventive, well-paced and funny.”

There is strangely little explanation in this movie, and the result is that the first half-hour seems like a long “Saturday Night Live” sketch. We meet Wally when he’s already arriving in London. We know very little about him as a person, which is how most sketch characters are: two-dimensional, one-joke people. The joke of him thinking he’s in a play when really, he’s not is hilarious, but how long can that tolerate itself?

Snider said, “I was relieved when a plot finally developed and the movie kept going.” The joke was still the same – Wally’s ignorance of the true situation keeps him happily entertained in the face of potential death – but enough variation was made to keep it funny.

Snider noted, “Murray plays Wally not as a bumbling fool — an Inspector Clouseau who stumbles from one mishap to the next — but rather as a fairly ordinary, spontaneous guy who is having the time of his life despite being in serious danger.”

The movie has only two or three offensive words or phrases. It’s a surprisingly clean, almost innocent movie – and yet it is insanely funny and very clever, too.

I don’t really see why people didn’t like this, but maybe it is because this wasn’t the type of comedy for everyone. I, however, found myself laughing throughout this movie. I personally think that this was a funny movie. See it if you haven’t and give it a chance. Judge it for yourself and don’t listen to everyone else. If you end up not liking it, I understand.

Next week I will be looking at a movie that I saw in the theaters with my siblings that I also found very funny in “Bill Murray Month.”