'FUZZ'........"WHAT DID HE CALL US? INEPT?".......

Fuzz (1972)    We could spot, in certain random chunks of this bit of 1970's cinematic flotsam, what the filmmakers were going for.......

               As raggedy, unformed and unfocused as this movie plays out, we still admired its attempts to duplicate the free-wheeling improvisation and camaraderie of Robert Altman's "MASH"......switching the comedy hijinks from Korea to a beleaguered police precinct in Boston......it even throws in one of the rollicking 'MASH' medics, Tom Skerrit.

               Adapted by Evan Hunter from one of his own 'Ed McBain' 87th precinct police procedurals, the film's precinct scenes take a valiant stab at Altman-esque mania........overlapping dialogue, mumbled asides, frat-boy pranks and giggling among the detectives (Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston, Skerrit), and lots of leering at the precinct's new Va-Va-Voom undercover bombshell....(Raquel Welch.)

              But all the movie's strenuous efforts to become 'MASH' with cops come off as imitative and clumsy. The jokes don't land. You can hear the crickets chirping between the lines.  And the film's never as funny as it thinks it is.....or hopes to be.

               To make matters worse, 'Fuzz' seems to give up on this limited faux-Altman goal about halfway through. With the arrival of its exotic villain, a murderous extortionist played by Yul Brynner, the movie starts looking like a flat, mundane TV cop show episode....like discarded outtakes from 'The Mod Squad'.

               We did enjoy the cast.....(if only they'd had Altman to work under instead of TV journeyman Richard Colla, tossed into the movie after Brian DePalma walked away from it).....we didn't even mind Burt Reynolds, at the the very height of his smirking, in-jokey career. But Raquel Welch, nursing a deep dislike left over from their "100 Rifles" working experience, did mind Reynolds......kind of unintentionally funny watching them avoid each other in a film they supposedly co-star in........

               About one third of a moderately entertaining film( the precinct stuff)  is buried in the "Fuzz" footage.......we're still not sure it was worth cherry-picking through its mercifully brief 92 minutes to find.  2 stars (**)......and even though its mandated 70's cop show freeze frame promised a sequel....none happened.......and nobody missed it.