***SPOILERS*** Looking like he spent all night boozing it up at the local jin-mill a bloodshot eyed Dick Van Dyke as collage criminologist professor Jonathan Maxwell gets involved in a murder that at first was ruled to be a simple heart attack. That had to do with the nasty and arrogant Acher Coe, Alex Hyde Whtite, a bigwig at the collage who, despite being in perfect health, suddenly dropped dead after biting into an orange during a meeting to decide to give Professor Stuart Evens, Whip Hubley, tenure which Coe was dead against.
We already knew that there was bad blood between both Evens and Coe in Evens flattening him in front of a shocked group of students and teachers when the two went at it over Evens forthcoming tenure meeting the Coe was to conduct. It in fact was Maxwells insistence in that Coe was murdered that had his good friend Prof. Evens arrested and charged with Coe's murder. It's now up to Maxwell and his good friend private eye Mike Bryant, played by Dick's son Barry Van Dyke, to find out who really murdered Coe by spiking his orange with a lethal dose of Digitoxin.
We have the usual suspect dug up by by both the Van Dykes, Dick & Barry, to who was responsible for Coe's murder which leads to two thing that Coe was involved in before his untimely death: His gambling problems with local bookie Herbie Saxe, Joey Diaz, whom he was into for 40 big ones, 40 grand, as well as his new novel that he was soon to have published. it was Coe's gambling that had him get the head of the collage acting dean Camile Brewster, Stephanie Vebditto, to run interference for him, by paying Hurbie off with money from the collage emergency fund, in fear that if it got out her chances of becoming Collage Dean would go straight down the rat-hole. As for Coe's unpublished novel it in fact uncovered all the dirty laundry about the goings on in the collage that was being used by Coe's murderer to get him or herself a promotion with tenure by blackmailing those depicted, with fake names, in the book!
It's good to see Dick Van Dyke back on his feet again, he does a lot of running in the film, after his serious leg accident some years ago but his bloodshot eyes and boozed up looks don't exactly make him look like the cool calculating and sober murder investigator, he an ex-homicide detective in the film, that he's playing. As for Dick Jr Barry Van Dyke as PI Mike Bryant he seemed more interested in the many sexy coeds on campus then in finding out who murdered Archer Coe. In fact one of Coe's many drawbacks in him being a man of influence and power at the collage that he worked at was his own sexual escapades with the curvy and sexy girl collage students whom he forced to put out for him in order to give them passing grades. As it turned out that was only one of the many many reasons that he ended up six feet under but in fact not the major one.
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