Although this no-budget independent sleuth comedy owes its silly sight gags and ridiculous comedic conceits to detective noir parodies like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, not to mention genre spoofs like Naked Gun and Hot Shots. As sophomoric as the humor is in those so-bad-its-good films, Gumshoe is more along the lines of being so-bad-its-just-bad, paralyzingly dull with groan-worthy jokes.
The lead character Biff Basham (Arnie Pantoja), is an unsuccessful New Orleans private eye throwback who thinks he’s a Dashiell Hammett character, complete with a trenchcoat and the fedora hat. One day he meets Christa Moretti (Rachele Brook Smith) whose husband has been murdered. She’s also the victim of a blackmailer who wants $100,000 or they’ll release saucy pictures of her to the public. So, Moretti pays Basham $2000 to find out who the mystery blackmailer is (“I haven’t seen that many zeroes since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor” quips Basham, which may, sadly, qualify as the cleverest remark in the entire film).
From here, the only thing worse than the script is the acting. But even the poker-faced brilliance of Leslie Nielsen (Naked Gun, Airplane!) couldn’t save the lame dialogue and non sequitur plot points (at one point, Biff and Christa are on the hunt for a hockey-puck sized apostrophe). Actor Pantoja’s attempts at being a bumbling Clouseau-like private eye make one realize there is a real art to portraying an incompetent idiot onscreen, and this amateur cast is completely void of such subtle skill. Even the stupid humor of genre parody classics such as Spy Hard and Top Secret had an irreverent edge: in Gumshoe, to appropriate its own brain-dead sense of humor, the jokes are about as edgy as a plastic butter knife.
What kind of film series would this spy movie fit in?
If you do consider this title for film programming, it should play in a spy-spoof series, should there ever be such a thing.
Would this film be suitable for an outdoor screening?
Yes, would be fine for an outdoor presentation, as it would appeal to a general audience that enjoys comedies.