Review: The Film, Clue The Movie...

A board game is adapted into a farce. Worse ideas exist, yet this one could work. 

If done well, that is. 

A farce is a type of comedy that uses exaggerated situations, physical humor, misunderstandings, and unlikely events to make audiences laugh. Clue the Movie (1985) tries hard to capture the spirit of a classic farce, but it falls short in places, while excelling in others. The Parker Brothers board game naturally lends itself to comedy, thanks to its eccentric characters, ridiculous murder weapons, and built-in chaos and misdirection.

Upon its release, the film was originally panned before it became a cult classic. The story follows six strangers who are blackmailed by a mysterious host and brought to a New England mansion in 1954, where the bodies soon begin piling up. These characters are initially anonymous, but are all asked to take a nom de plume for the evening; these, of course, are the characters in the original board game. The butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry, Legend), greets them as they arrive and facilitates the evening’s events. Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving, Flashdance), the mysterious host, gives each guest a weapon—you guessed it, weapons from the board game—and is soon murdered during a lights-off moment. 

The film also offered an original gimmick: three different endings. Paramount promoted this by listing which ending—A, B, or C—each theater was showing in local newspapers, letting audiences know which version of the killer’s identity they would see. The goal was to encourage fans to visit different theaters and see all three solutions to the mystery. Alas, the strategy backfired and confused moviegoers, though later home video releases solved the problem by presenting all three endings in sequence. The unreleased fourth ending embraced the ultimate mystery cliché—the butler did it—but director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny) cut it for lacking suspense, humor, and a satisfying climax.

In a way, CTM was groundbreaking, ahead of its time. Later decades saw many games adapted into movies, especially video games—Tomb Raider was adapted as a film twice. At the time, adapting a board game into a feature film was unprecedented, with critics dismissing the idea as Hollywood commercialism and questioning whether a board game could support a compelling story. Further criticism focused on the screenplay, which many mainstream critics found flat, tedious, and lacking in genuine humor. Reviewers also felt the film was pulled in too many directions, trying to balance a genuine murder mystery with a chaotic slapstick spoof. Despite its talented cast, critics felt the actors were stuck with a weak script and forced to compensate with manic energy. 

CTM found its true audience a decade later, when home video and cable television presented all three endings together. Today, critics and retrospective essays often praise Jonathan Lynn’s script for its ensemble chemistry and rapid-fire screwball comedy. Despite the initial negative reviews, critics found the atmospheric mansion and introduction of its colorful suspects engaging, though many felt the story began to drag as the mystery unfolded. Some critics praised the “delicious comic red herrings,” noting that the film’s breakneck pace allowed the hits to outweigh the misses.

Delivering what is widely known as one of his career-best comedic performances, Tim Curry anchors the film with manic energy, rapid-fire delivery, and masterful physical comedy, especially during his breathless reenactment of the murders. Madeline Kahn (Young Frankenstein) steals every scene as Mrs. White, bringing deadpan humor and eccentric charm to a widow who may—or may not—have killed her husbands. Michael McKean (This Is Spinal Tap) plays Mr. Green, an anxious, closeted State Department official, blending clumsy physical comedy with high-strung nervousness. Lesley Ann Warren (Olive) shines as Miss Scarlet, a sharp, glamorous, and unapologetic Washington, D.C. madam, blending alluring cynicism with excellent comic timing. 

Playing against his usual eccentric-scientist type, Christopher Lloyd (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) brings sleazy but hilarious charm to Professor Plum, a womanizing, disgraced psychiatrist. Eileen Brennan (Murder by Death) delivers a wonderfully eccentric performance as Mrs. Peacock, a loud, batty, and heavily bribed senator’s wife, complete with hilarious reaction shots and screeching outbursts. Martin Mull (Roseanne) plays the pompous, blowhard war profiteer Colonel Mustard with perfect deadpan confusion, serving as an ideal dim-witted foil to the other high-strung dinner guests. 

Through a critical theory lens, the film can be viewed in several ways. The characters are blackmailed over personal secrets and illegal activities, reflecting how McCarthyism and the Red Scare weaponized private lives to enforce conformity. Mr. Green is blackmailed for being a gay State Department employee, directly referencing the Lavender Scare—a parallel purge to the Red Scare—when thousands of LGBTQ+ federal workers were targeted as supposed security risks. Through a Marxist lens, the characters represent pillars of capitalist power, including the military-industrial complex (Colonel Mustard), government bureaucracy (Mrs. Peacock), and the medical industry (Professor Plum). CTM also deconstructs the traditional mystery by offering three different endings, each presenting a different solution.

The 1985 adaptation of Clue helped legitimize board games as source material for Hollywood films, while its quotable dialogue, ensemble comedy, and multiple endings transformed an initial box-office disappointment into an enduring cult classic. The film reflects Reagan-era conservatism by satirizing Cold War anticommunism, government surveillance, and the policing of private behavior, exposing the hypocrisy behind public claims of morality and patriotism. The movie helped popularize a comic murder-mystery format built around eccentric suspects and shifting suspicion rather than a brilliant detective like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. 

Clue anticipated interactive storytelling by showing that a narrative could offer multiple outcomes rather than a single definitive conclusion, an approach later explored by Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Kaleidoscope. The film set an early precedent for adapting abstract properties like board games into films, paving the way for later toy- and game-based franchises such as Battleship, The Lego Movie, and Barbie. A masterclass in hybrid art, CTM blends murder with screwball comedy and slapstick, using rapid-fire dialogue and self-aware humor in ways later echoed by films like Radioland Murders (1994) and Scream (1996).

Surprisingly, the film has aged well despite its 1950s setting and distinctly 1980s political satire. I recommend watching this movie as a one-off, especially as an homage to the late, great Tim Curry.