CHARADE (1963) **1/2 Cary Grant may be (acting) a lying rogue in bad drip & dry suits, or worse!, but he is compelling and disarming when insisting that he doesn't have a point, and has a great trigger finger for timing a punchline. Then you mix in Audrey Hepburn to be the charming centerpiece and enough familiar faces for an all-star team (Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy). The triumphantly electric Technicolor opening credits prophesize that the suspense levels never rise much beyond those of a particularly clever Murder, She Wrote, but the repartee between Cary and Audrey is always somewhere among fun and casually stunning. Final scenes in the theatre have a Hitchcock feel without the sense that anything could actually go awry-instead we must seek only the surprise happy resolution that can be the only result of such chicanery.
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