Screenwriter Gordon Bressack, the Emmy Award-winning writer of animated hits Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, was apparently also an avid playwright. Following his passing in 2019, his son (director James Cullen Bressack) took a screenplay of Gordon’s and turned it into Murder, Anyone?, a tribute which would surely leave any father, especially a writer, positively gleaming with post-production pride.

George (Maurice LaMarche) and Charlie (Charles M. Howell IV) are a pair of passionate, well-matured playwrights attempting to co-create a script for a fictional work to be produced either as a movie or a play. Throughout, George is set on a stage production, whilst Charlie insists a film is the route to take. This perfect demonstration of the ever-incongruous relationship between independent, artistic expression and crowd-pleasing moneymaking for the masses is just one of many aspects of writing for stage or screen to be picked apart in fine style in this movie. Don’t be mistaken into thinking this is done with any malevolence though; whether you’re a fan of film, theatre, writing, or all three, it’s obvious from the start that however accurately portrayed, it’s all to be taken from a whimsical, lighthearted point of view. And more than a hint of mischief.

As they’re born, debated upon, accepted or scrapped, ideas and arguments are played out in real time, with scenes cutting back and forth between the two bickering writers and their work in progress. The result is a deliciously, deliberately overacted surrealist mish-mash. If you’ve seen Josh Ruben’s Scare Me (2020) then you’ll have some idea of what to expect. This is every bit as cleverly comedic, theatrically presented, and brilliantly concepted. It goes a bit further on the play within a play theme though, more a play within a film within a play within a film, ad infinitum; if you’re after a linear plot, you can forget it. This thing feeds on itself every inch of the way.

Only four main characters appear in the production of the script, the heroine Bridgette (Galadriel Stineman), Kristos Andrews as leading man Cooper (exuding both mystery and slimy self-assurance equally), Spencer Breslin as Blain (the guy in the chicken suit), and Carla Collins as Marie, a blind French medium. Of course, given the metafictional nature of Murder, Anyone?, these characters are in a constant state of flux, keeping time admirably with the increasingly chaotic landscape of the writers’ imaginations. It’s utterly ridiculous; almost Python-esque in its swift about-faces, sudden halts, and complete reversals, but it’s also thoroughly, relentlessly entertaining and exquisitely well-acted; it takes a certain breed of actor to be able to carry off such a production as this, and the cast here are flawless.

So is Murder, Anyone? worth 80 minutes of your life? If you love not knowing where a film’s going, then absolutely, as here even the film doesn’t know that. I’d happily watch it repeatedly, as it’s the sort of film that’s likely to get funnier every time.

10 out of 10 WFT Whodunnit-ish Thingys