See Right Through You

Was Chevy Chase ever meant to be a leading man? I wondered this while watching Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a film I’d watched years before when it was playing in a regular loop on HBO (after failing to light the Box Office on fire), revisiting it just because I’d watched a bunch of other Invisible ManOriginally created by H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man is probably best known from the series of Universal Monsters featuring various versions of the titular character. films for this site and I finally had a copy in my grasp to help “complete” a gap in my coverage. I’d thought the film was amusing enough back in the day, a bit of a lark for Chase and some supernatural effects fun. But watching it again, as an adult, I was struck by the simple fact that the film could have worked so much better if Chevy Chase wasn’t in the lead role.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man comes from a strange confluence of events. It’s based on a book by H.F. Saint and was meant to be an Ivan Reitman comedy with a script written by William Goldman (yes, the writer behind classics like All the President’s Men and The Princess Bride). But once Chevy Chase came on board the film became a vanity project for him, and the studio backed him and his decisions on the project before, eventually, Reitman left. John Carpenter, who hadn’t had a real, solid hit since 1981’s Escape from New York, was brought on board so he could claim a paycheck and stay active as a director. And somehow this all came together to make a very bland, lifeless film.

That’s not to say the film couldn’t have been good, mind you. Carpenter is a solid director and, watching the film, there’s a lot to like about his production. Good effects, good action, good camera work. There are plenty of solid side actors and fun characters in and around the main piece of the story. But there, right in the middle of everything, is Chevy Chase and, well, I’m not really certain what the actor is doing here. This film was meant to show that Chevy could be more than the kinds of characters he’d always played, the above-it-all, sarcastic dude he’d played from years on SNL or the goofy guy he’d become in the Vacation films, but he’s just not a good fit here. Whatever Chevy wanted to do with this movie it didn’t work, and the film bombed at the Box Office immediately upon release.

At least John Carpenter got paid. We can’t really be mad about that even if the resulting film wasn’t really worth his time or effort.

In the film we’re introduced to Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase), an investment banker and general shitheel. After bailing out on work early one day (having not done much of anything for the day) and heading off to his club for a drink and a bite to eat, Nick is dragged over to a dinner party at the club by his friend, George Talbot (Michael McKean), all so Nick can meet Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), who just returned to, the country from abroad. The two hit it off, and make plans to have lunch (and so much more) soon after… plans that will be hard for Nick to meet.

After getting drunk at the club that night (once Alice leaves), Nick wakes up with a massive hangover. Heading to a conference he has to attend (for some unexplained reason), Nick ends up bailing on the conference early to look for a bathroom. He incidentally causes a technician working at the building to knock over his coffee, which then spills on some machinery and causes a massive meltdown on a key magnetism project. Not that Nick is privy to any of this as he’s found a quiet spot in the building to sleep, resting his eyes for a few minutes, which then becomes a few hours. When he wakes up, things have gone very wrong. The meltdown causes parts of the building to become invisible, with Nick in them. Now seemingly permanently invisible, Nick needs to find a way to reverse his condition, if that’s even possible, all while CIA agents that have become aware of his existence try to hunt him down.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is a messy film. It has a weird vibe to it, like Goldman was tapping into the kind of Invisible Man films that Universal used to make. A man accidentally turned invisible, dealing with what it means for his life, the tragic love he might not have, all while agents for the government want to take him and use him (dare I say, as their Invisible Agent), it’s all a lot. In the right hands it could work, or at the very least it could be watchable to an extent, and this film did actually have the right hands at certain points, from Goldman to Carpenter. But they weren’t the chief architects of this film. No, that was Chevy Chase, and it’s his influence that makes the film fall apart.

Chevy wanted this film to be his big break away from comedy and into more dramatic roles. He thought he could be a leading man, a big crossover hit, the kind of guy that would win Academy Awards and would be considered among the A-list talent of high society. Chevy Chase, in short, has always had an ego, and this film was his big ego trip. The studio backed all his decisions, and they thought that with Chevy in the lead they could have a massive hit on their hands. The only trouble was that Chevy was not the right fit for this film.

I think, in the right film, with Chevy actually willing to play against type and listen to his director, he probably could have given a strong, dramatic performance. That’s not the Chevy that shows up here, though.Instead of playing against type, it’s pretty clear that Chevy is never really comfortable being a dramatic actor. He leans hard on the standard Chevy Chase performance: above-it-all, fast with a (creepy, off-putting) quip, never really invested in the material. In a comedy, like Caddyshack, this kind of performance works well. In a film like Memoirs of an Invisible Man which, outside of its lead actor, is a drama, it just doesn’t work. Chevy doesn’t work here.

Which is a real pity because everything around him is actually working pretty well. Daryl Hannah plays a fitting leading woman, doing everything she can to have chemistry with her off-putting lead. Michael McKean is great, giving the usual scummy, jerkass performance we expect from the comedian. Sam Neil is in this as the lead CIA agent, David Jenkins, and he puts on an appropriately heavy performance. The film not working isn’t the fault of the other actors but Chevy Chase and his flat, boring, uninvested lead performance.

Similarly, John Carpenter did everything he could. He worked special effects wizardry, using practical effects, puppetry, visual tricks, and a lot of wire work to make Nick’s Invisibility seem real. This film is a master class in this kind of effects performance, and it’s all in service of a film that’s handsomely shot and well directed… outside of Chevy Chase. Every time we look at everything good in the film we always come back to Chevy because, well, he’s in every scene, acting like a sucking void, ruining all the fun.

I don’t know for sure if this film would be better without Chevy Chase in the lead. Likely if Chevy wasn’t here Reitman would have stayed on board, which would have given us a film with very different effects and a very different balance of comedy and drama. If Chevy wasn’t here he wouldn’t have exerted so much control over the script, which instead of forcing out three drafts from Goldman maybe only one or two happens. Without Chevy the film we would have gotten would be so different from what actually ended up on screen that we can’t even begin to guess what shape that would have taken.

But what is clear is that because of Chevy this film was a bomb. No one wanted to see Chevy Chase in this role, and as such no one went to see it in theaters. On a budget of upwards of $40 Mil, Memoirs of an Invisible Man made only $14.4, giving John Carpenter another failure for his resume and sinking any dream Chevy Chase had of being “a serious actor”. But, again, at least Carpenter got paid. And hey, we were saved from having to see more performances like this from Chevy Chase. After this he went back to making crappy comedies before descending into bit parts. So maybe some good did come out of this film after all.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man isn’t entirely unwatchable, it’s just not very good. It’s perfectly made to air on basic cable, at three in the afternoon, when there’s nothing good on TV and it’s too cold to go outside and play. It’s bad, but in a way that works when you’re bored and have nothing better to do. That’s not what Chevy wanted, but, well, he’s a raging asshole so who really cares what he wants.