Columbo: "Murder with Too Many Notes" has an onscreen copyright date of 1999, a year after "Ashes to Ashes." However, the movie's US premiere was delayed; it actually had its original release in France in May 2000, and didn't show up on US television until March 2001. I've always assumed ABC put off its release for so long because it's just so bad.
And it's a surprise that it is bad. It brings back Patrick McGoohan as director for the second time in a row, after the excellent "Ashes." Peter Falk wanted him to play the killer for the second time in a row as well, but McGoohan declined and Billy Connolly was cast in his place. Connolly plays movie composer Finlay Crawford, an aging composer who for the past few years has been passing off his apprentice's work as his own, and who kills the apprentice when he threatens to come clean. The apprentice is given a contrived habit of conducting on the roof while standing on a freight elevator's doors, to give Crawford a convenient way to stage his "accidental" death while Crawford is conducting in a concert right below (the elevator's lift time supposedly gives him nearly 2 minutes to get back to the stage and start conducting, but the timing of the actual murder sequence takes rather longer). There's an inaccuracy rather early on -- the apprentice shows his talent by suggesting a change in the spotting (where to use music and when to use silence) and the director is pleasantly surprised when it's shown to him. In real life, the director usually makes the spotting decisions in collaboration with the composer.
The movie's rather slow-paced -- Columbo has only had his first meeting with Crawford by the midway point, and much of what follows is trying to be quirky and establish a playful relationship between Columbo and Crawford, but it just comes off as padding and is generally trying too hard, as well as making some clumsy selections of public-domain music. And it's never clear why Columbo suspects Crawford in the first place. There are a couple of decent clues, like the victim not crying out when he fell tipping off Columbo that he was already unconscious or dead, but the dialogue between Columbo and his assistant (Richard Riehle, returning from "Ashes") harps on that point too heavily. And the explanation for how the freight elevator got there in the first place is so convoluted and illogical that it's obvious the whole thing is just in service to creating an overly complicated murder technique for the story.
And just as it's never clear why Crawford was a suspect, it's deeply unclear why he's arrested. Columbo's established that he has a motive, but he doesn't have any evidence to clearly implicate Crawford in the victim's drugging, the use of the elevator, or anything else. The final clue Columbo reveals just before ordering Crawford taken away has baffled me for 16 years, because I never understood what it was supposed to reveal that warranted Crawford's arrest. I finally just figured out that it does prove one thing: That the baton Columbo found in the elevator shaft was a gift from the victim's girlfriend, because the musical notes inscribed on its handle match the ones on a love note in his pocket. But he'd already established that several acts earlier just by showing her the baton and asking her! And all it proved was that he'd had the baton when the doors opened and pushed him off. It has nothing to do with Crawford. So why is it presented as the final nail in Crawford's coffin, the big finish of the case against him? It makes no sense. I can think of clues that would've been more damning -- like finding the victim's blood in Crawford's bungalow's carpet where he cut himself on the glass he'd been drugged with. But that never comes up. It's pretty much incoherent.
The ending didn't bother me so much on tonight's viewing, since I knew what to expect, but the first time around back in '01, I was outraged at how nonsensical the ending was, like some big chunk of exposition had been left out. This was the first Columbo movie in two and a half years, the longest gap since the series's return -- and there was every reason to suspect it would be the last one ever, especially considering how poorly it turned out. Oh, Billy Connolly was fun, of course -- I love that magnificent, lyrical brogue of his -- and there were some amusing moments, but it's mostly a sloppy, self-indulgent mess, and a deep, deep letdown for Patrick McGoohan's directorial swan song. The fear that Columbo as a whole might go out on this sour note -- pun intended -- was very upsetting at the time.
Luckily, though, this was not the lieutenant's final outing after all. Still one more to go...
Aww! Good 'ol John Karlen is from Brooklyn! His accent lent authenticity to Willie!
The subject of accents in TV and movies always crack me up-- people get so uptight about it. Of course, I only notice if something's off when they try to do Massachusetts or New England accents, and often not even then (the funniest is when somebody supposedly from Boston sounds like a bad Kennedy impersonation-- those guys have their own private accent). But there are so many accents, even mini regional accents (you can tell, in many cases, if somebody is from South or from Rozzie), that it's really not reasonable to expect everything to be accurate. I'm in the middle of doing an OTR homage and trying to find somebody who will do a bit part of an Irish informant in 1930s Boston-- I just want somebody who can do a Chief O'Hara imitation. 
