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Title: a good start; a tangled finish
Review: This Neil Simon comedy has fun with the hard-boiled Humphry Bogart character. Peter Falk does a respectable job, even avoiding characteristics which would lead viewers constantly to remember him as Columbo. Some of the other characters overplay the role, even as comic parodies.There is virtually no plot except a series of parodies of *Casablanca,* *The Maltese Falcon,* and other classics. At first, these parodies are fun, but after about the first 45 minutes, the fun fades. For the latter half of the movie, Neil Simon seems to have forgotten about any semblance of coherent plot and spent all his jokes.
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