100 Finest Films - The Naked Gun

The Naked Gun – 1988, David Zucker
‘The Naked Gun’ has sometimes fallen out of my favour; it’s the kind of insane, absurd comedy that you have to be in the mood for. In its favour, and what merits its place on this list, is the fact it is the undisputed best cop-show comedy ever made. It usually has two kinds of jokes. The most memorable are the visuals. These usually work on the stereotypes of cop drama, so a chalk outline floating at sea, kicking a door in rather than open, the iconic rooftop shot of a police car driving through streets, showers, roller coasters… If you’ve seen another Zucker and Abrahams film, you know the drill. The other usual jokes are puns, usually connected to visual gags or just plain awesome on their own. It’s hard to say why the film is so funny without just repeating it’s amazing dialogue, and ruin it. All you need to know is it’s not subtle in any way, but it’s this brashness and absurdity that works very well in the cop genre. Personally, I love cop shows, and I love everything ‘The Naked Gun’ does with their conventions. The first hour is excellent, it captures the look, the narrative and the characters perfectly. It’s Leslie Nielsen’s best performance, his Lt. Frank Drebin is completely in tune with every hard nosed cop protagonist you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t end as strongly as it starts, its still funny, but moves too far away from its source material it had such a handle on. It’s not the ending the movie desired, maybe it would have worked on an episode of ‘Police Squad!’, the show on which it originated, but on the big screen its too uninspired. Aside from this disappointment though, the film is one of the funniest ever made, an extremely dense mixture of sight gags and great lines, very much in the ‘Airplane!’ style. At under an hour and a half the film moves at pace, never letting up until its forgettable climax. This is the best in the trilogy, though all three films are of a pretty consistent quality. If you like insane comedy or cop-dramas, this is the best of both.

Best Moment: Frank pursues an attempted murderer, first on foot, then with some help from a driving instructor and his teenage pupil, who has to learn how to chase another car, and quick!