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76%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #1,069
...out of 20,329 movies
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Lieutenant Frank Drebin and his Police Squad! are put in charge of security when it's announced that Queen Elizabeth II will be visiting Los Angeles, California. Frank visits the event organizer, rich developer Vincent Ludwig, who is also reputed to be a criminal mastermind, who may also be responsible for putting one of Drebin's men, Nordberg, in the hospital. Stopping the plot to assassinate the Queen, solving the attack on Nordberg, and romancing Jane Spencer are all in a day's work for Drebin, along with several laughs along the way.
--IMDb
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"It's true what they say -- cops and women don't mix. It's like eating a spoonful of Drano. Sure, it'll clean you out, but it'll leave you hollow inside."
Words of wisdom from the greatest fictional police officer of all time, Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen). When the television series "Police Squad!" first premiered, people didn't know what to make of it. It was a half hour of non-stop slapstick, and while that works for a feature film, as a series it just doesn't cut it. Though most of the episodes were hilarious -- with the best opening sequence ever -- people just weren't interested enough and the series fizzled after about eight episodes. The film had been being plotted from the beginning but finally saw daylight in 1988. The role of Capt. Ed Hocken was replaced by George Kennedy, Priscilla Presley was introduced as the romantic lead, and Ricardo Montalban as the villainous Vincent Ludwig. And so it goes.
The Zucker Brothers are the masters of the slapstick comedy and "The Naked Gun" is one of the best ever. Leading man Leslie Nielsen couldn't be funnier as Frank Drebin, delivering his dialogue like a Shakespearean actor and playing the action sequences like he's Charles Bronson. What has always made Nielsen so hilarious in these roles is that, deep down, he is a dramatic actor. Watching him do and say these ridiculous things as seriously as he can is what has turned him into one of the greatest comedic actors of all-time. In "The Naked Gun", he must foil an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth, who is visiting Los Angeles. He does so with the help of his partner Ed, his lady friend Jane and the clumsy and future murder suspect Nordberg (played by O.J. Simpson).
"It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!"
There's not a whole lot left to say about "The Naked Gun". It's my favorite trilogy of all-time. To me, each sequel was funnier and more clever than the one before. The Zucker Brothers continued to bring the funny, even when you'd thought they'd ran out of shtick. And, that's what this film is -- ninety minutes of intelligent, well executed shtick from some of the masters of the craft. Who would have ever thought George Kennedy could be this hilarious? Who'd have ever thought Priscilla Presley an actress? All of these people seem rather useless on their own, but when brought together, they created one of the true comedy classics of our time. And this was just the first one -- there are two more to go in the trilogy. In closing, I will leave you with this: "It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day." 10/10.
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#1:
Tristan
- added September 17, 2008 at 11:20pm
There's some great lines / scenes, but I could
never really get into these movies.
7/10
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#2:
Lucid Dreams
- added August 20, 2010 at 6:27pm
First one was a great watch 9/10
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