After a year as one of the founder performers of the near legendary American late-night comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (1975-), Chevy Chase became the first of the original batch of “players” to leave to pursue a film career. He’d previously been associated with the underground comedy troupe Channel One which he co-founded with Ken Shapiro, the two teaming up for the comedy sketch film The Groove Tube in 1973, and he had also been a cast member of The National Lampoon Radio Hour. His subsequent big screen career has been, at best, sketchy – for every Fletch (1985), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) there were plenty of duds like Under the Rainbow (1981), Deal of the Century (1983) or The Couch Trip (1988).

In 1981, he reunited with Shapiro who directed him in the science fiction comedy, Modern Problems. After a troubled shoot (Chase was nearly electrocuted while filming a flying scene leading to a spell of depression, he was unhappy with the direction the film was talking and the finished product was re-edited to avoid an ‘R’ rating), Modern Problems was released on Christmas Day 1981 without any press screenings, never a sign that anyone involved in it had that much confidence. And sure enough, those critics who paid to see it and write their reviews were mostly scathing. And it’s easy to understand why. Given the talent involved, this should have been a lot better than it is – instead it’s a sloppy, poorly written piece that not even Chase’s considerable comic talents could do much to save.

Chase plays Max Fiedler, an air traffic controller at Kennedy International Airport in New York (the film’s release was compromised by negative publicity surrounding the real-life controllers’ strike of 1981) whose life has reached an impasse. His girlfriend Darcy (Patti D’Arbanville) leaves him because of his jealous and controlling ways (he’s a remarkably unlikable character, though curiously he’s described as “a prince who thinks he’s a frog”) and hooks up with Barry (Mitch Kreindel), her narcissistic friend who wants to take their relationship further. Driving home from a party one night, Max is involved in an accident with a tanker truck that spills nuclear waste onto his car. Exposed to the waste, Max starts to glow green and develops telekinetic powers and he sets about getting Darcy back. But more complications rear their head when Max spends the weekend at the beach house of his wheelchair-bound friend, publisher Brian (Brian Doyle-Murray) who is living with Max’s ex-wife Lorraine (Mary Kay Place whose performance is one of the best things about the film). Another guest is self-confidence author Mark Winslow (Dabney Coleman) who sets his sights on Darcy and voodoo-practicing maid Dorita (Nell Carter) may be the only chance he has of getting back to something like normal…

The script, co-written by Shapiro, Tom Sherohman and Arthur Sellers, is a mess. Max’s powers are of the ill-defined, all-purpose variety. Like Star Wars‘ “the Force,” it becomes whatever the writers need from one scene to the next, giving Max the power to move objects with his mind one minute and then fly through the air the next, often accompanied by “comedy” sound effects. They’re also completely ignored for much of the film which takes a full 25 minutes to actually imbue Max with these talents.

Modern Problems (the title doesn’t really seem to mean anything) feels like two scripts bolted clumsily together, the business at the beach house in the second half coming out of nowhere and taking us on a voodoo/exorcism detour that’s hard to reconcile with the rest of the film. It doesn’t seem to matter very much that Max is an air traffic controller (he could have had any job given how little difference his quickly forgotten about profession makes to the plot) and nor does it seem to serve any narrative purpose that Brian is confined to a wheelchair – had Max been a paraplegic, his life transformed by the freedom his new-found powers give him, it would have made a lot more sense.

Poorly paced and quite an unattractive film visually, it’s also as puerile as many of Max’s frankly annoying antics (he plays immature practical jokes on Barry and face plants into a huge pile of cocaine). Max is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a jerk and his climactic reconciliation with the eminently sensible Darcy is infuriating – what does she see in him. The whole film has the feel of being a creepy male wish fulfilment fantasy, with Max using his psychic powers to give Darcy an orgasm without her consent. It’s not that dissimilar in content to the following year’s Zapped!, directed by Robert J. Rosenthal, in which Scott Baio develops the power to lift up girls’ skirts, and it’s no more edifying.

The first act consists mostly of Chase moping around miserably mourning the loss of his relationship, the second is chock full of silly telekinetic japes and the last takes a weird supernatural bent. And throughout, there’s barely a decent gag to be heard. There are a few amusing moments here and there, but nowhere near enough of them and a good deal of patience is required to get through the film’s many dry patches. Even Chase seems to give up, failing to bring his usual comic energy to a thankless role. He was still a few years away from hitting his cinematic stride with the Fletch and National Lampoon’s Vacation films and the huge promise he’d shown on Saturday Night Live and in Caddyshack (1980) is nowhere to be seen here.

Despite the lack of reviews – and the fact that what few there were, were so damning – Modern Problems was a box office hit, more than tripling its budget and there are still many of fans who remember it fondly from childhood. One might caution them not to go back to it any time soon – it’s very much the proverbial “film of its time” with all the problems and awkwardness that comes with that and it’s not at all surprising that when talk turns to Chevy Chase’s glory years, that it’s not one that naturally crops up in conversation.