Movie Review – Naked Gun, The: From The Files of Police Squad!
Principal Cast : Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalbán, George Kennedy, OJ Simpson, Susan Beaubian, Nancy Marchand, Raye Birk, Jeannette Charles, Ed Williams, Tiny Ron, Joe Grifasi.
Synopsis: Incompetent police Detective Frank Drebin must foil an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.
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For almost the entire length of the 1980’s, comedy producing trio Jim Abrahams, along with David and Jerry Zucker, formed one of the most formidable slapstick satire runs in Hollywood history. Off the back of cult classic sketch comedy The Kentucky Fried Movie, the Abrahams/Zucker team would go on to put together the incredibly successful disaster spoof film Airplane!, the spy genre satire Top Secret!, and the black comedy classic Ruthless People, starring Danny DeVito and Better Midler, and topped off in 1988 with their seminal slapstick cop comedy spoof The Naked Gun, loosely based on their cancelled television series Police Squad!, from 1982. Starring legendary straight man Leslie Nielsen in the most deadpan of deadpan performances – a role that would go on to define, if not overshadow, his entire career – and Priscilla Presley, The Naked Gun is a joke-a-minute gag reel of vaguely interconnected plot points involving a smattering of LA-centric putdowns, a cringeworthy-in-hindsight supporting turn from future double murderer OJ Simpson (don’t let that stop you watching this), and one of the great safe-sex gags of all time; ostensibly a product of its time, it’s easy to see just why this one became a VHS rental favourite (spawning two direct sequels, before a Liam Neeson-led reboot in 2025), driven by off-the-wall chuckles and an absurd, laughably silly tone that is all too much fun.
In The Naked Gun, bumbling but well-meaning police detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) of Police Squad returns from a disastrous overseas mission to find his partner, Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), critically injured after a botched drug bust involving ruthless mobster Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalbán). As Drebin investigates, he becomes romantically entangled with Ludwig’s assistant, Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), unaware she is being used to further her boss’s sinister plot to assassinate visiting Queen Elizabeth II during a baseball game. With the help of his superior, Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy), Drebin stumbles, blunders, and pratfalls his way toward foiling the scheme in spectacularly absurd fashion.
Strange as it may seem to kids these days, but there was a time back before the internet ruined everything where it was actually cool to have your film referenced in or by a spoof film, such as this. Spoof films largely played up to public perception of popularity, parlaying key scenes from current or semi-current films into loose adaptations to flirt with the silliness of the magic of cinema – something the Zuckers and Abrahams team had successfully done for years, riffing on everything from specific genres to even popular films outside of the intended genre; spoof films, together with satire, managed to poke fun at popular culture and skewer more serious themes – note, the old white lady speaking jive to a couple of black dudes in Airplane! – in a flexible and typically un-serious manner. Sadly, the tsunami of quick-and-dumb parody films crested – or rather crashed and burned – in the 2000’s with an onslaught of dumber than shit Scary Movie sequels, Not Another Teen Movie sequels, Superhero Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie…. you get the idea – Craig Mazin has a lot to answer for in this respect, although he has salvaged himself with the quite brilliant Chernobyl miniseries on HBO a few years back.
Rewatching and reappraising The Naked Gun today, given everything that has happened in the intervening years, find me still quite loving this playfully silly movie in every respect. Sure, not every joke lands on the bullseye, and time has not been kind to the inclusion of then megastar sports hero OJ Simpson, who was trying to find his feet as an actor, but thanks largely to Leslie Nielsen’s straight-faced imbecile Frank Drebin, a master of disaster and face of a thousand internet memes (including the famous “nothing to see here” moment), the film positively sparkles with anarchic idiocy and juvenile chuckles. Where The Naked Gun works and where the countless wannabe film that came later utterly failed, is that Nielsen, Zucker, Abrahams and the entire supporting cast all understand that they’re part of the joke. Whereas serious actors seem to think that appearing in a spoof means they have to be seen to be working hard to make it funny, Nielsen, Presley, George Kennedy and the litany of cameos and gag appearances all know they’re the joke, and just play along. Presley, in particular, more than acquits herself brilliantly in this insanity as Jane Spencer, romantic interest of insignificant intelligence to even stupider Frank Drebin, and both she and Nielsen play up their absurdist tendencies with the kind of knowing wink to the audience that brings us along for the ride. Cynicism isn’t a factor in 80’s spoof films, thankfully, and so we’re left with a playfulness and cheekiness that, while perhaps anachronistic to audiences of the now, is a breath of fresh air even still.
Even if the jokes are positively mild compared to the current crop of bone-shattering idiocy like Jackass or the ilk of today, the non-sequiturs and double entendre’s certainly entendre as hard as possible for 1980’s audiences – and barely a boob or bum in sight. One of my favourite throwaway gags about a beaver is played beautifully, while several sight gags – such as Big Al brushing a “small” piece of banana off his face – are absolute diamonds. Okay, there’s some moments that don’t quite work as well, such as Drebin’s unfortunate encounter with Ludwig’s exceptionally expensive tropical fish and a pen, and some of the period era references might confuse younger audiences – notably the opening scene, in which the likes of Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gobachev are parodied as an early Villains League, will fly over many heads – but the genteel nature of the film’s scattered approach to violent comedy and comedic pratfalls feels like comfort food rather than an intellectual chore. The writing is pitch perfect for Nielsen and Presley, the direction is boldly solid considering the miniscule budget, and some of the practical effects haven’t aged well, but on the whole The Naked Gun still nails the concept of a spoof without aging out entirely, much like its 2000-era contemporaries.
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