Clean Slate

It seems as though many movies these days are made as if the filmmakers didn’t have a clue. So maybe it’s appropriate that Clean Slate is about a man who literally can’t remember anything from the day before. That’s the problem faced by the movie’s main character, played by Dana Carvey.

Carvey plays a private detective who, because of a head injury, is suffering from a unique form of amnesia: each time he falls asleep, he wakens with no memory of what happened before he dozed. Since he can’t even remember his own name, he’s papered his office with stick-‘em notes to himself containing such crucial information.

Complicating matters is the fact that he’s preparing to be the key witness in a major murder trial and has to bluff his way through the whole case. But he’s not sure, of course, whom to trust: his alleged girl-friend (Valeria Golino), who’s supposed to be dead; his sneaky doctor (Michael Murphy); or his old police pal (James Earl Jones).

Clean Slate is a protracted inside joke about such amnesia thrillers as Spellbound and Mirage, but it lacks the gall required for outright parody. Instead, the movie settles for a minor mystery plot peppered with a few decent comedy bits by Carvey, who succeeds, for the most part, in proving that he’s too nice to be completely outrageous, but also too clever to be completely dull.

Since all of the jokes rest, so to speak, on Carvey’s slight but sturdy shoulders, it manages to be mildly entertaining but, ironically, forgettable.