The Naked Gun is one of the Zucker Brothers' more entertaining films, and one of the better spoofs of crime/action films out there. Like their masterpiece "Airplane", this film includes Leslie Neilsen (as detective Frank Drebben) as well as an odd assortment of actors and celebrities from B-films and the sports world, this time including Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, Ricardo Montalban, and O.J. Simpson among others. You could almost spend the whole film just watching for celebrity cameos (the best of which is Reggie Jackson as a brainwashed assassin: "must kill the queen
.. must kill the queen." Some of the jokes don't work and quite a lot of them are just stupid puns, but the physical comedy is generally well done. Presley makes a surprisingly effective "straight man". The jokes keep rolling in fast enough that even the ones that miss don't slow down the fun.
Just by coincidence I saw the movie recently after seeing the Zucker's "Kentucky Fried Movie" just a few days before. So I noticed that they actually re-used one device from that film here, the botched break-in (which occurs in KFM during the extended martial arts sequence) where Neilsen goes into Montalban's character's apartment and smashes just about everything in sight (eventually starting a fire) while supposedly trying to sneak around.
Not a classic film in my opinion nor am I sure it ever will be, but it's well worth a few laughs if you're in the right mood.
Just by coincidence I saw the movie recently after seeing the Zucker's "Kentucky Fried Movie" just a few days before. So I noticed that they actually re-used one device from that film here, the botched break-in (which occurs in KFM during the extended martial arts sequence) where Neilsen goes into Montalban's character's apartment and smashes just about everything in sight (eventually starting a fire) while supposedly trying to sneak around.
Not a classic film in my opinion nor am I sure it ever will be, but it's well worth a few laughs if you're in the right mood.