‘Inspector Ike’ Evaluation: A Homicide Thriller Ship-Up, ’70s-TV fashion

Cinephiles are inclined to affiliate American microbudget filmmaking with uncooked, edgy earnestness, however some aspirational indies are very a lot into knowingly foolish comedy — see, as an example, the 2017 quick “Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone.”

“Inspector Ike,” directed by Graham Mason from a script he wrote with the comic Ikechukwu Ufomadu, who stars within the title function, is nearly as daffy as they arrive.

The film is an affectionate parody of TV-made homicide mysteries of the Nineteen Seventies, particularly “The NBC Thriller Film,” the umbrella below which, amongst others, Peter Falk’s beloved Lieutenant Columbo operated.

Ufomadu’s Inspector Ike just isn’t Columbo-esque. Removed from shambling, like Columbo, he’s ceaselessly cheerful and assured. In each “episode” he stops the motion to current a recipe, which viewers are requested to repeat onto particular “Inspector Ike” playing cards. (I used to be not supplied with a card.)

However the plot — by which a few theater varieties in turtlenecks and corduroy blazers banter earlier than one among them hoodwinks the opposite into recording a videotaped suicide be aware of types — may be very very similar to a kind of “Columbo” tales by which a mad quasi-genius overestimates his prison acumen.

To ascertain an alibi, the villainous Harry Newcombe (Matt Barats) takes a date to an avant-garde theater efficiency. “How lengthy is that this play,” the date asks. “Properly, let me ask you this,” the pompous Harry replies. “How lengthy is the workday of the common American?” As soon as she dozes off, he slips out to do his evil deeds.

Mason and firm didn’t have the means to precisely recreate the mise-en-scène of the actual deal, however they keep credibility within the writing and appearing departments. The long-pause humor right here is the other of the barrage we count on from “Airplane!”-style style goofs. It’ll work greatest with viewers whose humorous bones are of the dry selection

Inspector Ike
Not rated. Operating time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters.