- Location: Lizz and Erik's
- I was originally intending to claim that The Man Who Knew Too Little is a great testament to Bill Murray's preternatural ability to entertain under any circumstances, but the fact is that every Bill Murray movie could be described that way. I was recently reflecting on why The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is easily my favorite Wes Anderson movie. The answer is Bill Murray, plain and simple. All-around brilliant films like Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day are nonetheless impossible to imagine without Murray at their centers. He's also the sardonic saving grace of many a much-hailed (read: overhyped) independent film like Lost in Translation or Rushmore. Give Murray an extended one-joke affair like The Man Who Knew Too Little, and he'll find a way to make that joke seem funny for a full ninety minutes.
- The joke is: Wallace Ritchie (Murray) thinks he's participating in interactive London theater for his birthday when in fact he's embroiled in the middle of a spy-infused tale of international intrigue. How stupid must Ritchie be not to catch on? Well, he's the sort of guy who fires a gun at somebody, sees the bullet tear through the wall, and wonders how the special effects crew did that. At no point in the film does he begin to question what is going on, which is probably the only way the plot can remain afloat. Instead, he bungles his way through various interactions with a femme fatale named Lori (Joanne Whalley), a hitman known as The Butcher (Alfred Molina), and their various international handlers (Richard Wilson and Nicholas Woodeson). Although Ritchie's hapless brother (Peter Gallagher) thought he was getting Ritchie out of the way for the evening, this is a man who is never truly out of the way of anything.
- So how does Murray sell this farce? Despite the fact that he usually plays world-weary fountains of sarcasm, he is apparently also a master of naivety. When Lori begins to cry, Ritchie asks frankly, "Do you poke yourself in the eye? Or are you thinking right now, 'My dog is dead'?" When a policeman inquires about the life of a spy, Ritchie nonchalantly discusses how great a license to kill and the women are, but let's not forget that downside to the job: torture. My favorite scene may actually be the one that plays over the end credits in which two spy recruiters are made to run around on the beach barking like dogs while an obviously improvising Murray details why they should be doing so. It's goofy, it's stupid, and it's utterly hilarious all because Bill Murray is a really funny guy. Sometimes that's enough.
- Based on a novel by Robert Farrar, although the title obviously parodies the Hitchcock films.
