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The usual way of the world is that sequels amount to thinner and thinner carbon copies of the original. But not in the case of
Naked Gun movies, which only seemed to get funnier with each new entry. This third episode in the series finds Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) retired from his police squad and married to the woman of his dreams (Priscilla Presley). But he is pressed back into action to infiltrate a group of terrorists who plan to blow up the Oscars. The filmmakers make hay with spoofs of prison films and, particularly, of the Oscars themselves, in an award-show send-up that includes such real-life stars as Raquel Welch and Pia Zadora--and Drebin being mistaken for Phil Donahue. The takeoff on the dreadful production numbers that always drag out the Academy Awards will have you howling.
--Marshall Fine
The trailer for this movie was one of the happiest moments in recent cinema; the product itself is almost as much fun, but not quite. The third installment in the "Naked Gun" series kicks off with a pastiche of the railroad-station shoot-out from "The Untouchables," itself an homage to a sequence from "Battleship Potemkin." (All we need is some Russian director to send up this version, and we'd be back where we started.) The film stars Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, but then nobody else could star as Frank Drebin. Nielsen has taken the art of deadpan into uncharted territory, marrying a polite, paternal manner to a state of acute mental shutdown. The new movie, directed by Peter Segal, doesn't always get it right; it puts Drebin through too many pratfalls, leaving him dishevelled, which doesn't suit the man at all. But there is plenty of random chaos, leading to a nuclear-envelope scene at the Academy Awards, and the parodies keep on springing out of nowhere. Some work better than others; the seventies scene, complete with giant Afro, is a joy, whereas the "Thelma & Louise" rip-off goes nowhere and fizzles out. But these movies have traditionally relied on quantity of gags rather than quality; it is the determination to act stupid, to do anything rather than lapse into seriousness, that makes them such good company. With Priscilla Presley and Fred Ward. Not in French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
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