The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

The Naked Gun (1988) is a police parody attempting several jokes a second, and it came out of a television failure. First there was a series called Police Squad!. It aired on ABC in 1982 and closed after six episodes. The stated reason for cancellation entered television history: the network's head said the show required the viewer to actually watch it to be funny, and that was too much attention to ask. It was cancelled for not working as background. Six years later the same team moved the same character to cinema and this time it landed. Leslie Nielsen's Lieutenant Frank Drebin never once breaks his seriousness, and that is the whole method. Not one character finds anything around them strange. The joke density is the real point. Something is always happening in the background, on signage, at the edge of the frame. A second viewing turns up new ones. The umpire sequence at the baseball game and the opening police car scene are the most remembered. David Zucker directed; it is the work of the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams. Two sequels followed. It runs 85 minutes. Good for: parody, absurd comedy, and anyone who likes Airplane!. Less good for: some of the humour stayed in 1988 and there are crude jokes.