After yet another month wherein, no famous actors passed away, I am beginning to think it was a bad idea to base a theme on something over which I have so little control. Rather than try some complicated path from a celebrity famous from a different line of work, I decided it was best to bury the theme for at least this month. (Bury! HA! Get it?) That would qualify as stupid humor in anyone’s book. In honor of such stupidity, let us take a look at The Naked Gun (1988, dir. David Zucker).
The Naked Gun is the movie continuation of a too-soon-canceled television show called Police Squad. It follows Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), a bumbling Los Angeles detective who ends up working on two cases. The first involves a partner of his, Officer Nordberg (O.J. Simpson, before all the…other stuff), who was investigating drug trafficking before being implicated in the criminal operation. The second is overseeing security for a visit by Queen Elizabeth II. As it turns out, the cases are connected as Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban) is running the heroin ring and plotting to assassinate the queen. Drebin gets some help from Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), Ludwig’s assistant, who knows nothing of either criminal enterprise. Drebin and Spencer predictably fall in love, and, despite his best attempts to fail, Drebin manages to save the queen, bust the heroin ring, and keep the world safe. He also sings the worst national anthem in recorded human history.
The plot of a Naked Gun movie (two sequels dramatically fade in quality) is largely irrelevant to the fun of watching one. Here, you get Nielsen hitting all the right notes by playing everything so profoundly seriously that the humor comes through better than if it were played for laughs. Not all the gags work, but the ones that do connect so perfectly that they can still make me laugh after multiple viewings. In particular, the entire section at the Los Angeles Angels game never ceases to amuse.
Born out of the Airplane-style films that gained popularity in the early 80s (and from a co-writer/director of Airplane), The Naked Gun refines the “throw as many jokes as possible at the wall and hope a lot of them stick” strategy used in earlier spoof comedies. Is it dumb that one scene gets its laughs from Lt. Drebin going to the bathroom while his lapel mic is still on, and we hear everything? Of course. Is it also hilarious? Absolutely.
Comedy never ages particularly well, and that is a problem here, too, as our sense of humor has evolved over the past 37 years. However, spending some time with the folks at Police Squad will always be an entertaining stretch of time. The upcoming remake starring Liam Neeson as Lt. Drebin looks to be a fresh take on the character with the same formula. Comedy sequels are universally terrible, but this remake has me intrigued enough to think that it just might work if Neeson commits the same way Nielsen did. Commitment to the harshly dramatic interpretation of goofball comedy still works.
FUN FACT – The baseball scenes were filmed at Dodger Stadium – clearly with the permission of the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, the Dodgers did not want their team image to be tarnished by the full-scale brawl depicted in the film, so the Angels and Mariners were the teams used.
Just Watch says that The Naked Gun is currently streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, and Fawesome. It is also available for rent/purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and other services.
As a reminder, here is the original postthat details the scores and weighting system.