Charming and brutal

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Phoebe (Sean Young) spent all her money to move to Rome but she gets stood up. With no money, she notices a Dachshund Lost ad in the newspaper with $5k reward. The owner is in Monte Carlo and unemployed actor Julian Peters (Richard Lewis) joins her for a cut. On the train there, Julian sells the dog to Augie Morosco (John Candy) who married Elena (Ornella Muti) for her money. Neil Schwary (Jim Belushi) is going for the gambling but his wife Marilyn (Cybill Shepherd) is leery of him wasting all their money. Julian and Phoebe get kicked off the train for not having vet papers for the dog. They finally arrive to find the owner dead. Inspector Bonnard (Giancarlo Giannini) leads the investigation and Julian becomes a suspect. Neil steals a suitcase and finds a dead body inside. Alfonso de la Pena (George Hamilton) is a local gigolo.These are all unlikable ugly American characters. A manic John Candy gambling from one table to the next is almost funny. It's chaos. The screwball comedy falls flat. I wouldn't mind Bonnard putting every one of them in prison. Eugene Levy as a director may not be the best but the writing is no winner either. The cast is stacked but this is simply not funny.

First, IFC runs Town and Country, and now this. The difference between that stinker and this Pink Panther rip-off is that Town and Country was watchable. This isn't.I can only surmise that the cast signed up for this so they could goof off in Europe on somebody else's dime. Belushi is especially irritating. His scene with Candy (doing a Z-grade Dom DeLuise) was torture. Speaking of torture, five minutes of the talentless Shepherd, and I bet the prisoners at Gitmo would crack like walnuts!The real "Crime" (besides this being green-lighted) is Shepherd's character: a mousy wife who takes a Monte Carlo casino for a half-million bucks! If you buy that, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona you might be interested in!

THE GOOD: Sean Young (unusually lively and appealing), Giancarlo Giannini (who gives class to the film by his mere presence), some moments of James Belushi.THE BAD: John Candy (grating, with barely even one funny line) and George Hamilton (his aging gigolo is an even more aging stereotype).The others fall somewhere in between.All in all, this film is pleasant entertainment for 90 minutes, although for a film billed as a "mystery-comedy", the mystery part is largely secondary. (**1/2)

I'd never heard of this and just saw it on television. It's charming.I thought George Hamilton was particularly good as an Italian gigolo -he had mastered a terrifically funny accent (among other things, he creates new syllables - as in "jump - ED" or "laugh-ED"). I had not seen Giancarlo Giannini in anything since the 1970s - and he's wonderful in the only serious part - the Monegasque (correct spelling for one from Monaco?) detective. Sean Young throws herself into this comedic role and Richard Lewis, John Candy, Cybill Shepherd, and Jim Belushi are fine.I do recommend this movie highly - it's light and frothy, but with many funny lines. As others have said, it has a beautiful setting - in the Hotel de Paris and Monaco in general. For whatever reason, this movie seems to be unpopular in Ohio (the two negative comments are both from Ohioans) - if you're in the other 49 states or overseas, you're sure to enjoy it.