Getting Away with Murder (1996, Jack Lemmon, Dan Aykroyd, Lily Tomlin) – Classic Movie Review 10,384

Writer-director Harvey Miller’s 1996 comedy Getting Away with Murder stars Dan Aykroyd, Lily Tomlin, Bonnie Hunt, Jack Lemmon and Brian Kerwin.

Mild-mannered ethics professor Jack Lambert (Aykroyd) discovers his next-door neighbour is the notorious war criminal Karl Luger. As a media circus descends on an extradition battle, some neighbours rally round the seemingly harmless old gentleman Max Mueller (Lemmon) who offers a defence of mistaken identity to avoid deportation. Jack becomes so obsessed he decides to follow through the death sentence imposed on Luger in absentia years ago, and at night injects the apples in Mueller’s garden with cyanide. The police believe it is suicide. Is Max Mueller actually Karl Luger? Is Jack Lambert getting Away with Murder? In the ensuing chaos, Lambert eventually marries Mueller’s daughter (Tomlin).

Trying to make a comedy out of this situation results in the expected disaster, and all the respected cast are sunk without trace in the quagmire. It is hard to believe that Aykroyd, Tomlin and Lemmon could be so rotten. There is just nothing they can do to save it.

Also in the cast are Jerry Adler, Andy Romano, Robert Fields and J.C. Quinn.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,384

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