Gregory Mcdonald’s “Fletch” was one of numerous pulpy stuffs I gladly devoured during my wild and crazy childhood years in the 1990s. It is too bad that any of McDonald’s following sequel novels was not translated in South Korea, but “Fletch” remains one of the more enjoyable stuffs I read during that period, especially compared to those disposable products of Sidney Sheldon and Clive Cussler (In my inconsequential opinion, both of these two popular novelists’ writings were quite juvenile even to the 10-year-old self of mine, a precocious little prick who would engulf almost everything in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” a few years later).

In case of Greg Mottola’s new film “Confess, Fletch”, which is incidentally based on the following sequel novel of “Fletch”, it does not evoke much of my little entertaining time with “Fletch”, but it did at least a marginally better job than the 1985 film based on “Fletch”, which was nothing more than a casual star vehicle for Chevy Chase. While the 1985 film did have a fair share of fun and amusement coupled with an intriguing noir plot, Chase did not seem to be on the joke along with the movie itself as being aloofly charming and smarmy as usual. As late Roger Ebert pointed out his review, Chase was the one who almost sank the film, and then he unfortunately sank deeper with “Fletch Lives” (1989).

In case of John Hamm, who plays the titular hero of Mottola’s film, he is also aloofly charming and smarmy in his own way here as he did in the acclaimed TV drama series “Mad Men”, but he did a better job than Chase at least. He wisely lets himself often upstaged by a number of variously colorful supporting performers popping here and there around him, and his acting works best whenever his laidback character is caught off guard by another unexpected plot turn or revelation.

At the beginning, the movie puts us right into a big trouble into which Fletch unwittingly gets himself. As shown from the following flashback part in Rome, Italy, Fletch was asked by his current girlfriend to handle a rather tricky personal matter of her wealthy family, and it seemed that all he had to was going to Boston, Massachusetts and then investigating a local certain artwork dealer associated with her family, but, what do you know, he comes upon a dead body not long after arriving at a house where he is supposed to stay for a while.

Although he instantly calls for the police, Fletch finds himself becoming the prime suspect of the murder case mainly because he chooses not to tell everything to two very different detectives assigned to the case. As your average seasoned cop, Sergeant Inspector Monroe (Roy Wood Jr.) instantly senses something fishy about Fletch, and so does his earnest but occasionally clumsy Junior Detective Griz (Ayden Mayeri).

While trying to evade these two detectives as much as possible, Fletch gets himself more into the situation which he still does not understand that much. It is apparent that local artwork dealer has been hiding something behind his eccentric appearance, so Fletch decides to investigate this shady dude more, and this naturally leads to a series of occasions where he casually disguises himself in one way or another for getting more clues and information.

As steadily maintaining its low-key comic tone, the screenplay by Mottola and his co-writer Zeb Borow keeps throwing one surprise plot turn after another for more amusement, and some of the supporting cast members in the film delightfully chew every moment of theirs as required. As a quirky neighbor living next to where that murder happened, Annie Mumolo, who is mainly known for co-writing the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “Bridesmaids” (2011), is simply uproarious during one wacky kitchen scene with Hamm in the middle of the story, and Kyle MacLachlan has some sly fun with his neurotic supporting role. Although she enters the movie later in the story, Marcia Gay Harden cheerfully overacts as the suspicious stepmother of Fletch’s girlfriend, and John Slattery, who previously performed along with Hamm in “Mad Men”, also has his own moments as a cranky local newspaper editor who does not like Fletch much for good reasons.

In contrast, Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri deliberately underplay during their several key scenes with Hamm, and their supporting characters bring some common sense to the increasingly complicated story in addition to providing some extra humor in each own way. For example, Monroe initially seems to be merely slouching after Fletch along with his junior partner, but, not so surprisingly, he turns out to be more intelligent and persistent than expected, and Wood and Mayeri complement each other well throughout the film as the two amusingly contrasting figures who may deserve their own movie.

On the whole, “Confess, Fletch” is a fairly engaging comic noir flick which has enough colorfulness to keep things rolling before everything in the story is revealed and resolved in the end. Yes, its narrative is a little too convoluted while demanding some suspension of disbelief from us, but that usually comes with its genre territory, and you may appreciate more of the game efforts of Hamm and the other main cast members in the film. It is too bad that there will probably not be another Fletch flick as the movie just came and then quickly got forgotten in last year, but it is a bit of improvement over the 1985 film at least, and that is a little but nice achievement.