A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY (1983) * The lulling, soporific charm of a nice episode of "Murder, She Wrote" is something less than a virtue in a full length venture. Good heavens this is dull. Agatha Christie plays her usual fair game of putting all of the cards on the table, and then demonstrates her three card monte sleight of hand to the extent that even though you get most of it readily enough, you never quite put it all together perfectly, and could have. ..and it's ok to have characters that you don't care for or about if you're going to kill them off anyway...but... it's really painful . Neither reprehensible nor entirely irritating. Just painfully dull. Helen Hayes is fine enough as Miss Marple, but the character has few enough qualities of the energy required to carry a film-when played well or even this well-and other than that it's pretty much all just standing around and dying 'em off. Maurice Evans is, as to everything else, the exception: he doesn't demonstrate that the great ones never slow down nor dim in magnitude, but he does make it very clear that if you've acquired it-or its been bestowed upon you-in the most formidable degree, you're never going to dim enough to look like anyone else. So of course they get rid of him first, and you already knew that was going to happen, and that he was the only hope. But the best part--the very best part--the great part---the so funny you can barely control your bodily functions: is Zakes Mokae: he sounds exactly like-accent, intonations and emphases, tone, bearing-Garrett Morris doing that great "Chico Escuela" sketches on SNL.
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