“Police Academy” and “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” are 100-proof 1980s comedy spoofs: Silly gags, slapstick pratfalls and lots of (literal) toilet humor. They ridicule the myriad of police thrillers and grim film noirs that still come out a dime a dozen even now. “Police Academy” was the first to take the self-righteous piss out of the genre, but my compass points toward “Naked Gun.”
“Police Academy” revels in the “Porky’s” humor that ruled the early 1980s: Bawdy sex jokes, nudity at every chance, and ripping the wheels off of the Politically Correct Bandwagon. The set-up: The mayor of a large city declares that all citizens -- regardless of eligibility -- can join the police force. Naturally, idiots, scum, nerds, dweebs and gun-nuts hear the call of duty. The joke is, of course, that the police head-honchos are more incompetent and the downtrodden losers prevail. The writers dish stereotype gags on every minority group there is – black women, Latinos, gays, women, etc. “Blazing Saddles” and “The Producers” did far worse damage. But those films were finely scripted and hilarious from start to finish, they had and have a reason to exist. This is a stoner hit-or-miss comedy affair, and everything filmed seemingly thrown in. Steve Guttenberg is the wiseass charmer, always thumbing his nose at authority in full Bill Murray-Chevy Chase mode. B
“The Naked Gun” is a quick flick that is glorious entertainment. The “Airplane” Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker team clearly loves the films they mock. More importantly, they love Leslie Nielsen. We open with a stand-alone short that’s even funnier now – 1988’s leading dictators, terrorists and despots meet for lunch, planning to destroy America. Suddenly Lt. Frank Drebin (Nielsen!) lays waste to the room. Ghadaffi gets his ass kicked. Khomeini gets poked. Gorbachev has that weird red mark on his head wiped off. In perfect dead-pan, Nielsen says, “I knew it.” None of this makes sense, but it was every American’s truest dream that year. (Joke’s on us. Nielsen was Canadian.) We then jump into a hilarious, barely-credible-on-purpose L.A. conspiracy involving an evil tycoon (Ricardo Montalban) trying to whack the Queen of England. Every joke is a grade-school bad pun, obvious slapstick or goofy sight gag. But they work wonders, even the lesser jokes. Nielsen sends “Gun” into orbit, how serious he is in every moment. His “National Anthem” is gold. A cure a bad day. A
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