Amazon.com
It's more of Leslie Nielsen's Lt. Frank Drebin, the bumbling cop from the old
Police Squad! television series. This time, Drebin uncovers a plot--led by supervillain Robert Goulet!--to sabotage America's energy policy. The jokes don't stick as well as those of the first film (
Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!), but there are some very funny slapstick moments, including several involving former First Lady Barbara Bush (played by an actress, of course).
--Tom Keogh
From The New Yorker
Leslie Nielsen plays Frank Drebin, a middle-aged police lieutenant whose lethal weapon is utter obliviousness. This movie-like its predecessors, the 1982 TV series "Police Squad!" and the 1988 film "The Naked Gun"-has the look of cheap, hasty television action drama. It's oblivious of production values, narrative sense, and all the higher, finer aspects of the human spirit-of everything, that is, except the impulse to spray us with jokes and knock us out of our chairs. The director, David Zucker, has a defiantly cheesy style. For him, nothing's ever too trashy or worn out to be used again; what he practices is, in the truest sense, pulp comedy. There's a hint of an environmental theme in the plot of "NG 2 1/2," but Zucker and his co-writer, Pat Proft, never allow it to slow down the picture's relentless barrage of slapstick, movie parodies, outrageous double entendres, and cracked musical production numbers. And Leslie Nielsen is inspired. He plays Drebin as a straight arrow who's finally letting go, giving in to his repressed impulses: he sings, he dances, he loves, he shoots to kill. Nielsen combines B-movie earnestness, exuberant mugging, and a trouper's slightly desperate cheerfulness: he turns this rather alarming character into a sweet, ebullient lunatic-albeit one who's hell on innocent bystanders. Also with Priscilla Presley, Robert Goulet, George Kennedy, Richard Griffiths, and O. J. Simpson. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker