4 out of 5

Director: ZAZ

More than 20 years later it’s a little rough around the edges, but The Naked Gun still represents that beautiful short era of ZAZ helmed films that were this awesome combo of silly, double entendre, wordplay, slapstick, sight gags, and just general nonsense. As a youngster this was mind-blowing. Now, that roughness just shows due to how much this style of humor has flooded out to television and other movies – generally not as full out as it is here, and generally not as smart – and so you can more easily see the sort of clumsy attempts to work some clumsy puns in, but because it’s all done in the Why Me Worry style of these flicks (which is the hardest part to pull off), it’s all so charming. It helps, of course, that Nielsen and George Kennedy just nail these characters. The plot involves “Police Squad” being tasked with preventing a potential assassination of Queen Elizabeth. Of course, it doesn’t start there, and instead skips through as many detective / cop movie tropes as it can and wipes together a few scenarios to knit a lil’ 85 minute tale. Will you laugh? Absolutely. Will you roll your eyes? More than once. It’s not the sort of absolute weirdness that Top Secret! would offer, but The Naked Gun still kicks the pants off of most funny movies, and manages to do it without having to wink at the viewer.