P.I. Private Investigations

First feature from pop video impresario Nigel Dick, keeping an eye on the critical success of After Hours and Something Wild. Joey (Rohner) is the uncool yuppie who stumbles into someone else's trauma and emerges a more together person, his tormentors this time a gang of bent cops. The humour stems from a series of seemingly fated coincidences. After being unfairly passed over for promotion at work, he returns to his apartment to find a body in the shower and an alien tape on his answering machine, which contains information that could help Joey's journalist father (Zerbe) expose police corruption, and turns Joey into a marked man. Razor-faced Ryan (Sharkey) is the crooked detective assigned the job, but he consistently bungles his opportunities and degenerates into a cop of the Keystone variety. Similarly, as our hero is relentlessly pursued against a soundtrack of Dick's video hits, the film slides into self-parody, despite some outrageous moments and inspired twists.