Weakest, but still funnier than more than half the comedies ever made

The world needs more “Naked Gun” movies but any who try to enter these hallowed halls have their work cut out for them. Here in “Naked Gun 33 ⅓” it even seems like the comedy team of Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers have their lulls here and there but you can still say assuredly it’s one of the funniest movies out there.

Abrahams and the Zuckers are pros- the laughs come in the foreground, the background, the upside down, and the underground. They come from pop culture, from pratfalls, from cameos, from sex gags, and the truly absurd. They come from dialogue that I hate to call stupid- it’s so awkward and out of left field that you’re tickled just by how far into the realm of ridiculous they took it.

The pace of the jokes is key. In the other two films, it did feel like they managed to get all the sight gags and regular gags to double up on each other even but here they still come at a pretty good clip. Director Peter Segal understands the erratic tones and when to switch.

As to the plot. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) has retired from Police Squad. Even though they let him keep the handcuffs, his marriage to Jane (Priscilla Presley) is struggling and he seems disheartened that the only shooting he can do now is within the confines of his own home. What to do now? Have children? He tried to adopt an 18 year old Korean girl but she wouldn’t let him.


Retirement just doesn’t suit him so when Ed (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) with news of a terrorist threat, Frank is pressed into active duty again to go undercover to stop a terrorist named Rocco (Fred Ward). He has a girlfriend (Anna Nicole Smith) with legs for days and boobs you could hide a 747 in.

The film is loaded with comic set pieces. One of the best is Frank going undercover at a clinic, unaware that it’s actually a sperm bank. A lesser movie would have made it lowbrow but it’s actually a little mini-masterpiece of mistaken intention, keeping one’s cover, and sound effects turning the situation into a hoot.

Not to mention the opening scene, a great riff on “The Untouchables” where babies in carriages, the president, the pope, disgruntled mail carriers and several others rush down the stairs. The best is O.J. Simpson catching and nearly spiking a baby (this would sadly be the last time O.J. would be entertaining because of his football-acting career).

But the piece de resistance is an Academy Awards sequence as Frank tries to stop a bomb- definitely the funniest thing the series has ever done. Everything from the movies, the fashion, Phil Donahue (actually Nielsen) and Raquel Welch, the riff on bleeding heart speeches, deep throating a microphone, and pratfalls regarding moving, descending stairs, falling off the stage during dance numbers, and getting one’s head stuck in a tuba.

These scenes are buffeted by prison gags, riffs on movies like “Thelma and Louise” and “The Great Escape”, funny sight gags like the Police Departments Hall of Fame, or what it’s like in a Los Angeles City High School.

They wouldn’t work nearly as well as they do without Nielsen’s straight faced, sometimes hard-boiled detective-sometimes idealistic romantic performance, or how Presley pretty much matches him in how they both manage to be so serious all while the joke is that they’re completely missing the bigger picture.

The supporting cast works too, from Fred Ward going cartoonish menacing as Rocco, Kathleen Freeman as his hilariously ornery mother (“What are you doing in my bathing suit?), Kennedy and Simpson playing the straighter men to Nielsen’s goofy straight-man, and Anna Nichole Smith uses every one of her assets, which include being nonchalant.

I believe this is still the only best comedy trilogy ever made and it would depress me greatly if someone were to sully it so Seth MacFarlane, Liam Neeson, and Pam Anderson better come correct. May the spirit of the great Enrico Pallazo continue to guide them.