I'm Chevy Chase And You're Not (2025)

You can imagine, after years of being told, "You're funny," a comedian might eventually start believing it and forget about the importance of material and timing, energy, audience, and cultural context, and so end up acting zany - look at me, blowing raspberries! - rather than delivering hard-earned jokes, and Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase - a man as funny as he is obnoxious, as loved here as he is hated there, happy-go-lucky yet deeply ashamed - might come close to that line today; you certainly can't watch the octogenarian presented here, and can't hear about his long catalogue of laugh-free comedy film bombs, and can't hear about his childhood trials and tribulations and come away saying, simply, he's funny.

★★★☆☆

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Bird on a Wire (1990)

Mel Gibson's mullet and wild-eyed "loose cannon" routine feels self-conscious and tired here - after Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 - but he and Goldie Hawn generate chemistry together, and occasional laughs, as former lovers fleeing killers from his pre-witness protection life, and helping bind the wafer-thin plot, action and comedy together into a palatable something is the Neville Brothers' easy-listening cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On A Wire.

★★★☆☆

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Snatched (2017)

A really funny opening scene in a clothes store showcases Amy Schumer's exceptional talent in sending up self-obsessed urban American Gen-Yers - and then the rest of the film transports this talent to the jungles of Ecuador where Schumer's character Emily and Emily's mum (Goldie Hawn) go on the run from kidnappers in a story that passes in so mindless, so mundane and so unfunny a fashion, the movie ends with you realising you have been looking at it but not watching.

★☆☆☆☆

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The First Wives Club (1996)

Three women played by Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton are jilted by their husbands and so band together to exact revenge in this comedy popular among middle-aged women, mostly funny, at least for its first half, but let down by an unrewarding last half and unnecessary voiceover narration (probably to emulate the voice of the bestselling book upon which the movie is based.)

★★★☆☆

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Death Becomes Her (1992)

Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis ham it up in this gothic black comedy about anti-ageing, but really the movie is just a thin excuse to showcase special effects that wowed in the day.

★★★☆☆

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Overboard (1987)

Rich and nasty Goldie Hawn isn't very nice to her carpenter, Kurt Russell, so when she hits her head and suffers amnesia, he takes revenge by adopting her into his less fortunate life, making her keep house and raise his children in this light and frothy romantic comedy from the 80s.

★★★☆☆

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