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Foul Play

Foul Play

Comedy · Mystery · Thriller · 1978

A shy San Francisco librarian and a bumbling cop fall in love as they solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves, and the Catholic Church.

Movie details

Foul Play

“It's a highly dangerous comedy!!”

1978 Comedy · Mystery · Thriller 1h 56m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.8 / 10

18.8K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

74 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

45 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.3 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A shy San Francisco librarian and a bumbling cop fall in love as they solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves, and the Catholic Church.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Foul Play?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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The Seven-Ups

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See How They Run

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Zero Effect

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The Cheap Detective

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Colin Higgins

Written by

Colin Higgins

Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn

Gloria Mundy

Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase

Tony Carlson

Burgess Meredith

Burgess Meredith

Mr. Hennessey

Eugene Roche

Eugene Roche

Archbishop Thorncrest / Archbishop's brother

Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore

Stanley Tibbets

Marilyn Sokol

Marilyn Sokol

Stella

Brian Dennehy

Brian Dennehy

Fergie

Court is in session

Put Foul Play on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Adrenaline Seeker

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Prestige Tourist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.