Synopsis
A shy San Francisco librarian and a bumbling cop fall in love as they solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves, and the Catholic Church.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Goldie HawnGloria Mundy
- Chevy ChaseTony Carlson
- Burgess MeredithMr. Hennessey
- Eugene RocheArchbishop Thorncrest / Archbishop's brother
- Dudley MooreStanley Tibbets
- Marilyn SokolStella
- Brian DennehyFergie
- Marc LawrenceRupert Stiltskin
- Rachel RobertsDelia Darrow / Gerda Casswell
- Frances BayMrs. Russel
Recommendations
- 80
Variety
Foul Play revives a relatively dormant film genre - the crime-suspense-romantic comedy in which low-key leading players get involved with themselves while also caught up in monumental intrigue. The name missing from the credits is Alfred Hitchcock. Writer Colin Higgins makes a good directorial bow. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
A funny, successful, and very derivative crime-comedy. - 70
The New York Times
Foul Play is a slick, attractive, enjoyable movie with all the earmarks of a hit. But as “House Calls” did a.few months ago, it starts out promising • genuine wit and originality only to fall back on more familiar tactics after a half‐hour or so. If either film had a less winning opening, perhaps it wouldn't leave a vague aftertaste of disappointment. - 70
Time Out
Unsatisfactory as a whole, the film is hilarious and tense in bits. - 40
Newsweek
To anyone who has seen half the movies he appropriates, and can therefore guess every twist of the plot miles before it happens, Foul Play's frenetic eagerness to please is about as refreshing as the whiff of an exhaust pipe on a hot city afternoon. [24 July 1978, p.59] - 30
Washington Post
Higgins can't keep his mind from wandering. Foul Play never begins to make sense as a mystery - Dudley Moore and the 3-foot-9 Billy Barty, become the butts of grotesquely conceived and staged sight gags. - 20
Chicago Reader
Director Colin Higgins plays foul with the audience, constructing some of the most dishonest suspense sequences ever filmed, and ends with a thriller that is obnoxious and manipulative in the extreme. If it were exciting, I suppose it wouldn't matter, but it's not: Higgins can't be bothered to bring the slightest bit of conviction to his plot, which takes nearly two hours to run its unimaginative course.
