Naked Gun: From The Files Of Police Squad!
Hot off the success of their major hit Airplane! (STILL to this day the definitive disaster movie spoof), the legendary ZAZ trio of David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams surprised everyone by setting their sights on television next, coming up in the process with Police Squad!, an hilariously funny, yet nonetheless faithful send up of the endless parade of procedural cop shows from the 1970s and early 80s, with their featured âtough copâ being Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen, still maintaining a good working relationship with ZAZ after being one of the few main cast members to opt out of doing Airplane! 2: The Sequel, a derivative follow up which they had publicly disowned), a supposedly good cop who was really a bumbling ass, a one man wrecking crew of blatantly obvious stupidity. Spoofing up all the conventions of those old cop shows even including the final freeze frames and the utterly humorless, straight faced acting as always seen by those various lead actors, it (along with Airplane!) also signaled the start of a new, second career for Nielsen himself, a longtime stalwart dramatic character actor who had specialized in either authority figures or bland leading men heroes going all the way back to 1956âs Forbidden Planet. But the TV series was sadly canceled after only 6 half hour episodes were produced, although many people who later caught it in various 3 hour marathons made it into a cult item that was seen by them as being little known comedy gold. After a few more years of doing some hit films, ZAZ decided to give the whole concept another shot, and upon seeing that Nielsen was still game to take part (having spent most of the decade himself up until then in B movie hell), they came up with this 1988 theatrical release, a smash hit at the time in which it turned out that Hollywoodâs hottest new comedy star was a 60 something longtime veteran of dramatic acting. Indeed, in addition to the sequels, Nielsen would spend the rest of his life churning out one anything goes spoof movie after another, mostly of varying degrees of quality, but this first of The Naked Gun series remains his single greatest comedy starring role, still trolling all the old clichĂ©s of the tough cop genre but yet still so brilliantly inventive and filled with energy that any and all comedies produced today laughably pale in comparison. The film actually manages to hold up so well today simply because it remains funny and seemingly not afraid to get outrageous either when it comes to expressing just how dense Nielsenâs Drebin is, with the one choking point for a lot of viewers today being O.J. Simpson as dimwitted fellow cop Nordberg, a small role here (though greatly expanded in the sequels) for at least whom we can take some pleasure in him being the type of character who takes on excessive amounts of punishment whenever heâs onscreen. Him aside, the other regulars for the franchise here include Oscar winner George Kennedy as Drebinâs equally goofball partner and Priscilla Presley as what would be Drebinâs long running love interest, starting off here as an assistant to the villain who falls for Drebin while heâs working on the case. Starting off with a politically scandalous yet hysterical opening scene where a roomful of âAmericaâs Enemiesâ circa 1988 which includes Khomeni, Kaddafi, Idi Amin, and Gorbachev (Bin Ladin wasnât on the scene yet) hatch a plan to stage a major terrorist attack on The United States (thus setting up the movieâs plot) before being surprised and beaten up by Drebin in disguise, and as our main villain we get Ricardo Montalban as a wealthy Los Angeles businessman hired by our enemies to stage an assassination against Queen Elizabeth II (played by an impersonator) during her royal visit to America. And what is Montalbanâs planned method of getting past the security thatâs being handled by Police Squad? Some form of specialized âhypnosisâ that is triggered at the push of a button to make some unwitting (and most likely unwilling) person suddenly enter into a robotic state, obtain a hidden firearm, and pump some bullets into Her Majesty before presumably killing themselves, a plan of using mind control that is not all that different from Khan Noonian Singhâs (also played by Montalban in an obvious nod) method of using brain slugs placed in peopleâs ears to make them do his bidding in Star Trek 2. And while ZAZâs writing and directing skills shine especially in the epically funny baseball game sequence at the end of the film, itâs amazing how so much of the filmâs success at generating humor really does rest on the shoulders of Nielsen himself along with his expertly deadpan style of delivery and complete willingness and lack of fear when it comes to the fine art of repeatedly making a complete fool of himself on camera all while clearly having a grand old time in the process of doing so, a not so ignominious feat when you consider the high level of comic timing involved and making one wonder if this oldschool actor was just really expertly coached in mastering the art form of funny or if he just always had these natural comedic instincts all along and was only now adeptly bringing them to the surface to have entire generations rolling in laughter for years to come. Whether they be in the blunt way that he tells Nordbergâs grieving wife to prepare herself for the worst, or in the way that he always seems to destroy something EVERY single time that he parks his car and so on, this is not so much a cleverly written comedy with a nonstop string of gags (as Airplane! was) but rather a comedy that is confidently acted and inhabited by a true star of the genre (albeit one whom nobody ever would have thought had it in him) who manages to expertly carry the whole thing with such a light step all while successfully spoofing the entire hard boiled, tough talking cop stereotype with such stunning accuracy that one cannot imagine anyone else even attempting to try. Not that ZAZ doesnât run their own setpieces that Nielsen joyfully takes part in, such as Nielsen sneaking into and winding up trashing Montalbanâs office before winding up being charged with âsexual assault with a concrete dildoâ(!), a car chase scene where Drebin commandeers a vehicle that turns out to be a driving school student and her instructor (played by John Houseman in his last role shortly before his death), wacky cameos by Weird Al Yankovic and Lawrence Tierney among others, and a rescue attempt on The Queen during a state dinner that sees her and Drebin wind up in a very compromising position. All the while, the smartly placed running theme continues to be that while Drebin is widely thought of by others as being a âgood copâ, in reality he is actually such an idiotic buffoon that he almost constitutes a legitimate threat on both society as well as anybody unlucky enough to ever come anywhere near him, which still doesnât make him any less lovable and which has always been the underlying quality in many other âbumbling copâ comedies as well. But that final sequence at the baseball game with Drebin first disguising himself as the opera singer performing the National Anthem (Enrico Pallazzo) which is mainly funny because nobody at a ball game would even recognize a famous opera singer so he gets away with it (and mangles the Anthem in the process) along with also disguising himself as an umpire afterwards and obsessively frisking each player to find a weapon, only to find that when Montalban pushes the button it turns out to be the most legendary ballplayer of them all on that field, not to mention having a 6 man team of commentators for one baseball game (including college basketball announcer Dick Vitale) and such bits as having 2 scumbags squatting in The Queenâs royal box seats and having to be shooed away when she enters, which all goes to prove that this movie still remains a classic to this day not only for Nielsen, but for also having ZAZ be at the top of their games too, thus creating a comedy masterpiece that none of them would ever top again in their careers but will still nonetheless be enjoyed by future generations when it comes to putting smiles on their facesâŠ
9/10