Chevy Chase: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked
3. Browning Oh! Heavenly Dog (1980)
Is there really much that needs explaining here? It's a film where Chevy Chase plays a PI who gets killed when he gets too close to uncovering the truth behind a missing woman, only for him to be returned to Earth to finish the case because the afterlife can't decide whether he's destined for Heaven or Hell. But he isn't sent back to his original Earthly body, of course. He gets sent back as a dog. A crime-solving dog. Chevy Chase as a crime-solving dog is obviously a terrible film. There is no actor in the world who could make that a movie worth seeing. Kevin Spacey could essay the role of the detective-turned-pooch and it'd be a travesty. Orson Welles would've struggled to bring any sort of gravitas to the role, let alone humour. As it happens, Chase does even less than either of them, and then some. You could argue that the material he had to work with wasn't exactly pushing him in the direction of a first-rate performance, but he was probably kicking off at getting second billing to Benji, a fictional dog that's like the modern, terrible Lassie.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
