Cary Grant is pretty much on social security by this time and is merely phoning in the same performance that worked so well when he wasn’t 135 years old and when he had material that wasn’t intent on portraying him as a not very amusing dirty old man. Co-star Audrey Hepburn comes off as just a wispy thing with an accent who spends all her time chasing after Cary Grant even though she periodically suspects him of being a cold blooded killer. The supporting cast includes Breath-A-Sure spokesman George Kennedy as well as James Coburn and their villains appear closer to buffoons then to menacing and calculating thieves. And all the hoopla is over three rare stamps! I suppose the guys from my dad’s stamp club would enjoy it, but they do belong to a stamp club.

The movie begins promisingly enough with a dead guy getting the old heave ho from a train in his jammies, but sadly things go downhill from there because the next thing I know we’re at a mountain resort with Reggie Lampert (Hepburn) who is hanging out with her friend and there’s an annoying little kid that belongs to Reggie’s friend and he’s running around squirting people with a squirt gun. We also meet Cary Grant’s character. One of the movie’s gimmicks is that for some reason Grant insists on adopting various identities at various times throughout the film. When he adopts his new identity, he usually just tells Reggie some new story. First he was Peter, who was just a chap at the mountain resort, then he was Alexander Dyle, the brother of a dead guy involved in this mess, then he was Adam Canfield who was a master thief, and finally he is revealed to be Brian Crutchshank, a crack investigator with the Treasury Department who is trying to recover all this money that Reggie’s late husband stole.

Reggie is one of those gals that married her husband merely so that she could complain about what a dork he is. She’s preparing to divorce him and maybe that’s how most women would act if Cary Grant came sniffing around them, even in the petrified state this movie finds him in. In any event, things are resolved for her along that route fairly easily when she gets back to her house in Paris to find everything missing and then goes down to the morgue to identify hubby’s carcass. Grant shows up at her house for some reason and says he’s sorry and all that and then we go to the funeral of her husband and it’s just she and her girlfriend that are there until the big time guest stars show up. These include Kennedy and Coburn and another guy whom I didn’t recognize from any episodes of The Love Boat.

Now, I’ve been to a couple of funerals in my time and I must hang out with a more genteel crowd that Reggie’s husband did, because without exception I don’t recall anyone ever going up to the body and sticking a mirror under its nose or jabbing it in the hand with a pin in an effort to make sure the corpse is really just that. Well, that’s what the boys here do when they pay their respects. The movie is played so broadly that Reggie just acts a bit surprised when this occurs as opposed to the uproar one would expect.

Reggie’s husband was in WWII with a couple of his buddies, including Coburn and Kennedy. The government gave them $250,000 to deliver to someone and they decided to just keep it for themselves and to say that they were ambushed by the Nazis and that they got ripped off . Those guys seem to get blamed for everything!

Somehow or other one of the guys was killed (his name was Carson Dyle) and Reggie’s husband ended up with the money and disappeared. Now, his war buddies have finally tracked him down and are looking for the fortune to split amongst themselves. The movie tries real hard to keep you off balance with these “who do you trust” type scenarios, but did anyone really think that the good guy wasn’t Cary Grant and that all the big time guest stars who keep dying are the bad guys? Never for a moment was I thinking “gee, maybe Reggie should take her chances with George Kennedy and his hook for a hand and not trust the very tan and personable, yet rascally Cary Grant”.

I also want to go on record as stating that I also never for a moment thought it was good idea for Reggie to trust bureaucrat Walter Matthau who somehow turned out to be Carson Dyle I believe, even though it was never explained why everyone thought he was dead. Well, other than the fact that Walter kept telling everyone that he was dead. Wouldn’t Coburn and Kennedy know if Carson was really dead since they were there when this all happened? Or were they secretly working with Carson? If so, they never mentioned it or referred to splitting the money that many ways when they were arguing over who got how much.

I also thought it was convenient that half the free world found this Reggie’s husband at the same time and all managed to converge on this location to get a paw on the loot. I also don’t quite get why the killer killed Reggie’s husband without finding out where the money was. What kind of plan is that?

I suppose it’s the same kind of plan someone would dream up that would also dream up this Cary Grant character. How in the world was he able to work his way in with Coburn and Kennedy? What connection did he have with them? I understand he was in deep cover as a T-Man after some stamps for the government, but why would Coburn and company have anything to do with or think that he could be of help? Did Cary just show up at their secret headquarters one day and say, “I know you’re looking for a bunch of loot off of this guy and that he just got killed by one of you and I can help by getting close to his wife”. Does that make any sense?

Reggie’s character is one of those clumsily-written women that exist solely in the imagination of the male screenwriter. Her husband has just been murdered and all her stuff sold off and her main concern is whether Cary Grant likes her? Okay, it is Cary Grant, but I want to know where I can find me a girl like this, because she doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that Cary may be trying to kill her and knows that he lies to her on a regular basis about such fundamental aspects like “what is your name” and “who are you”. Sure, she whines about it and worries occasionally about getting killed, but she’s usually so busy having ice cream with him and going on boat rides and soaking up the Parisian atmosphere, who has time to worry about one’s personal safety and issues of trust?

The entire time you’re watching Charade, you can’t help but think about what an ill-advised attempt it was to replicate the Hitchcock genre of Sophisticated Suspenser Starring Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart. It’s clearly meant to be much more lighthearted than something like Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, or North By Northwest, but it instead comes off as fluffy nonsense where all involved are just stunting for the camera unconvincingly.

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