The story this time involves Chevy Chase as a man who is in the wrong place at the wrong time when a secret government experiment goes haywire. He is rendered invisible, and so are parts of the building where the experiment took place. The building is left resembling a large block of Swiss cheese with large holes here and there, as if a postmodern architect had finally been given completely free rein.
At the time of his sudden invisibility, Chase is looking forward to a date with a documentary filmmaker (Daryl Hannah) he met in a restaurant a few days earlier. What to do? Stand her up? Or count on a certain sympathetic warmth he saw glowing in her eyes, and ask her for help? As he decides, the plot thickens along predictable lines, as the government tries to keep the invisibility secret, and a scheming spy tries to capture Chase for his own sinister purposes.
The plot is lazy and conventional. What is good about the movie involves Chase and Hannah, who have to work out between them the logistical problems of their strange relationship. It's one thing when love is blind, but another when the lover is invisible. Chase appears in public muffled in clothes from top to bottom, or he sneaks around invisibly and eavesdrops on people, or in one clever sequence Hannah creates a face for him by painting one on with makeup.
This material is intriguing enough that I wish there had been more of it. Comedy consists of the application of logic to the absurd, and there are many more opportunities here than the screenplay takes advantage of. Somehow the director, John Carpenter, seems convinced that we care about the resolution of the plot involving spies and government secrecy. We couldn't care less, since every character and every line of dialogue in these scenes is demoralized by the countless times they've been recycled.
How about a movie that was about the real subject of this one: A relationship between a man who can see a woman, and a woman who cannot see a man? What would they really talk about? What unsettling or intriguing sexual possibilities might there be? Daryl Hannah, who is onscreen some of the time all by herself (talking to Chase's disembodied voice) makes as much of such opportunities as she can, and has fun with the cosmic absurdity of her situation. But the movie doesn't help her much.
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