Murder, Anyone?

A hammy but amusing poke at the conventions of the murder-mystery genre, as two hack writers struggle to come up with an original play.

I liked the premise of “Murder, Anyone?”, if not all of the execution. Two older hack writers sit around a laptop trying to craft a murder-mystery play. As they envision it, it plays out before our eyes using other actors. Then they argue and change things around, so their creation shifts, too.

Charlie (Charles M. Howell IV) wants to do something classy and old-school like “Deathtrap,” which leads him to some liberal “borrowing” from it and other plays. Let’s call it an homage, he says. What’s the difference between a rip-off and an homage, one might ask? At least the homage is honest about stealing.

His writing buddy, George (Maurice LaMarche), would rather do a movie than a play so they can make some real money. Putting on a play in Los Angeles will only get you 12 people in the audience, and those are friends of the cast, he argues. He prefers something campy and edgy, and keeps throwing ghosts and other goofy supernatural elements into the mix.

Director James Cullen Bressack — who will later appear himself, conveniently enough as “The Director” — based the film on a play his father, Gordon, wrote many years ago. Now it’s been turned into this puckish, self-referential piece that plays out like a slamming-door farce meets crime caper meets choose your own adventure.

Interestingly, he opted to shoot the framing scenes with the writers in black-and-white, so it looks like a gorgeous old film noir detective story. Then the imagined play is in bright, vivid colors — more real than reality, as it were.

In the story-within-a-story, Bridgette (Galadriel Stineman) is a haughty rich girl staying at her parents’ mansion when she is visited by Cooper (Kristos Andrews), a stranger who says he’s been staying with the next-door neighbors, the Babocks. Cooper was originally named Richard and was a middle-aged guy, but the writers decided he should be young and ripped to build up the sexual tension with their leading lady.

The title comes from the fact Cooper is wearing tennis clothes and carrying a racket — a play on the storied question asking for a game. We learn early on that he murdered the Babocks and is looking to steal the Picasso painting belonging to Bridgette’s father. In one iteration dreamed up by the writers, he used his tennis racket as his weapon, leaving it dripping with blood. It makes for a memorable image, though I think the racket would just bounce off someone’s head.

Their interaction is interrupted by the arrival of Blain (Spencer Breslin), another spoiled rich neighbor, who’s wearing a chicken costume. (George’s idea, of course.) The idea is he’s a day early for Bridgette’s costume party, but he’s got his own nefarious ideas about the Picasso.

Later, a psychic will turn up, played by Carla Collins. This is a little too on-the-nose, as it’s lifted straight from “Deathtrap,” so they change her to being blind… and French… and also, can only see visions into the past, not the future.

Later on, she’ll hold a séance and acquire supernatural powers, as the zombie-fied Babocks (with the missus played by Sally Kirkland) turn up to crash the party.

Again, it’s all amusing stuff. I liked the scenes with Charlie and George hashing out their competing visions for the play/movie/whatever. The “play” scenes vary quite a bit in effectiveness, sometimes worth a good laugh or two, sometimes laying there like a great big egg. (No thanks to Blain, despite his chicken suit.)

Even at 81 minutes, “Murder, Anyone?” seems like it could have used some judicious trimming, either in the editing bay or in the writer’s room. The funny parts are genuine, the dull portions stack up too high, and there’s a fair amount of cursing and more blood than you’d expect.

It feels like a fun, corny exercise a bunch of people in the movie business threw together in between other projects. Maybe it would have worked better as a play.