Every time he falls asleep, private detective Maurice Pogue forgets everything what happened yesterday and thus has to re-learn as much info as he can from his tape recorder. He is an ex-LAPD cop who has to testify against criminal Cornell on Thursday, who killed Pogue's girlfriend Sarah in a car explosion. However, a woman introduces herself as Sarah and gains Pogue's trust. Little by little, Pogue investigates and interviews LAPD colleagues Rosenheim and District Attorney Dolby. It turns out Cornell is after an ancient coin he stole from a museum, and which Pogue hid, but gives it to Sarah. Pogue however realizes that Sarah is actually Beth, secretly working for Dr. Doover, who exploits Pogue's amnesia to get the coin. Beth has a change of heart and decides to help Pogue. After testifying on court against Cornell and retrieving the coin, Pogue gets his memory back and re-starts his relationship with Beth.
Why does Nolan's "Memento" work, while the crime comedy "Clean Slate" doesn't? Maybe because a drama has the benefit of the doubt of not needing a point after each scene, since it can "bluff" with contemplation, while a comedy has the burden of requiring a set-up and a punchline continuously. Both films feature protagonists with amnesia after a traumatic accident, who search for clues of their enemy, but develop in different styles and moods. "Clean Slate" has some moments of cinematic literacy thanks to director Mick Jackson, but its script is hopelessly stale, lukewarm, bland, overstretched, without any sense how to conjure up a good joke. Dana Carvey is sympathetic as the private detective with amnesia, Pogue, and one wishes he was given something with better inspiration and ingenuity to reach his full potentials. There is not a single brilliant gag that stands out, everything is just okey. The actors all give it their best, including James Earl Jones and Michael Gambon as villain Cornell, who is missing his right thumb (after the trial, a reporter tells him his appearance got a "thumbs down"), yet there needs to be a reason and a goal to them, which are absent.
The director Jackson has more success with certain cinematic techniques than with jokes. For instance, in one scene, Pogue takes a magnifying glass and spots a sign behind a half-torn photo of him, saying "Police Aca...", which is followed by a match cut to said sign in full, "Police Academy", which Pogue visits. In another scene, a wall painting of a faceless Mona Lisa "dissolves" to the same outline of Sarah's (Valeria Golino) face as she sleeps in bed. And after a betrayal, the camera zooms out of Pogue's face to a wider shot, revealing the poster of a film: "A Man Betrayed". These are nice touches. But the storyline required a better sense for shaping humor, since huge 85mm close-ups of the actors' faces can only go so far. The best joke is probably the scene where Pogue is running away from his enemies on a street, and in order to hide the ancient coin from the museum, he simply inserts it into a parking meter and runs away, to retrieve it later. Other jokes fare less. The fact that Pogue forgets everything each day gets annoying at times, especially in the forced, cringe court testimony where he stalls in the most cliche ways. It is perplexing that "Clean Slate" only becomes a good movie 68 minutes into its running time, during the betrayal 'plot twist'. Why did it take so long? It is strange for a comedy that its serious film noir elements would have worked much better on its own than in tandem with its comedy elements.
Grade:+
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