Modern Problems (1981)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) There are movie stars of the past whose appeal seems inexplicable now, and 1980s era Chevy Chase is a prime example of those. For every Vacation film in which he was funny, there seem to have been three more movies seemingly built around his inexplicably smarmy comic persona made of equal parts lecherousness and arrogance. Modern Problems doesn’t help itself by stringing along a disjointed plot made of supernatural power and icky romantic comedy in which a man tries to stop his ex-wife from dating other people. There’s a racist explanation at the end when the superpower ends up being a case of possession—at which point you can be forgiven for checking out of the film altogether. I suppose that there’s something funny about someone being given superpowers and using them for hilariously petty purposes, but I’m not even sure that this lazy script has even thought of seeing things from that angle. In the end, Modern Problem is not all that interesting nor funny and given the overbearing place taken by Chase in the film, it’s impossible not to place at least some of the blame on him.